


this is the day (no other)

by draftingletters



Category: Doctor Who, Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-28 21:06:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 54,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8462941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draftingletters/pseuds/draftingletters
Summary: “There’s this festival on Centerix B,” Teemu says. “Only happens once every thousand years, nothing like it anywhere. And nothing that could possibly try to kill us this time. I promise. It’s very peaceful.”Paul looks heavenward. There’s no guidance there, but there is a rumble of thunder; it’s raining again somewhere in the upper library stacks. “Do you jinx us on purpose? Is that it?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Beta services kindly provided by embracedthedark, thefourthvine, sasha_feather, and augusta_a_king.
> 
> This fic has a soundtrack, if you're into that kind of thing! It's [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL15dB1qEeY1WoaBYGENfVVkZrbpaLfF0k).

Even before the sea monster shows up, Paul is expecting one of the worst days of his life.

He’s dealing with this by refusing to acknowledge the situation until after breakfast--not so much because he’s _avoidant_ , but because otherwise he just wouldn’t get anything done at all.

Once more out and back, he’s thinking. That should wear him out enough to call it a morning and go home for a shower, and breakfast, and facing up to the real world. Instead the waves shift direction with no fucking warning while Paul is still paddling his board outward, a solid quarter-mile from shore, which is too far out to get back to land in a hurry, but not so far that he can’t hear the screaming coming from the beach.

A heavier wave almost rolls him sideways; Paul makes very sure of his grip before sitting up to look back over his shoulder.

In the first moment there’s nothing obvious. The beach is emptying of people, and the handful still in the water are scrambling to get out. The water is churning, waves rolling outward like somebody’s dropped an enormous boulder right offshore--

But then he sees the enormous tentacle flailing out of the water, and then another, slamming down on the beach so hard that even from this distance Paul can see the wall of sand thrown up.

His first thought, completely unhelpfully, is that at least this is happening on a day that already couldn’t get any worse. His second, more to the point, is whether he can get back to shore without being eaten by something, or crushed, or whatever. None of the possibilities sounds appealing. It’s not _that_ far to swim if he leaves his board, but it’s years since he really had to swim for speed, and a lot can happen in, what, seven or eight minutes--

“Hello,” says someone brightly, about six inches behind him, and Paul _does_ fall off his board.

In his defense, he tells himself as he spits sea water and scrambles back up astride the board, there wasn’t a boat out here with him a few seconds ago. He’s pretty sure he would’ve noticed that.

“Sorry,” says the guy in the speedboat. He at least has the decency to look apologetic. “I didn’t think--”

“Look,” says Paul. “Can I get a lift or something?” There’s no more screaming coming from the beach, which he really hopes means everyone else got away and not, well, the alternative.

“--I didn’t think it would _hatch_ ,” the guy continues, with earnest dismay.

They stare blankly at each other for a few long moments, while the thing in the water bellows and thrashes. It sounds suspiciously like it might be coming closer.

“Do you maybe want to get out of the water?” the guy suggests, like he’s just thought of it.

Paul hastily weighs his two alarming options and hauls himself up over the side, pulling his board in after him. Once there, he sits down on the nearest bench and scrubs both hands over his face. A familiar dull throb is setting in behind his eye, but not the kind that’s likely to get worse. Just saying hello, really. “Did you say _hatch_?”

“I didn’t know it was ready yet!” The man has vanished down a hatchway; his voice echoes strangely, given that it’s from a cabin that can’t be more than a few feet across. Paul gives his head a sharp shake, in case this is a new and interesting hearing symptom; it doesn’t help. “One of my axiomatic compressors broke and I thought, I can just find a planet with an ocean similar to the incubation tanks--”

Paul uncovers his face, slowly.

“--and leave the egg there while I make repairs, but no.” Something rattles and crashes. “Look how scared it is.”

“It’s trying to eat people,” Paul feels compelled to point out. Though, as a matter of fact, the thing has submerged again, leaving the water quiet for the moment. Strangely, that’s not reassuring at all.

“It won’t eat _people,_ ” the man says, sounding offended. “Unless--” His head pops up through the hatchway. “Are people on your planet plants?”

“Noooooooo,” says Paul carefully. He wonders if he’d have been better off just swimming for it. Maybe he’s still got a chance.

“Then what are you worrying about?” he demands, and tosses Paul a headset. “Are you all this judgmental around here? Put that on.”

It looks normal enough, an earbud and a microphone, but then again so did the ocean half an hour ago. “What’s it for?”

“Talk to it while I finish with the compressors. Try and calm it down a bit.” Something very large thumps up against the hull, as if for emphasis, and Paul braces himself more firmly. “You can come down and try it from inside, if you like.”

It’s hard to see how inside would be any safer, or leave enough space for making repairs, and anyway Paul prefers to be able to see what’s coming at him. “Up here’s fine,” he says. He’s about to ask the other guy’s name, or any of another thousand more urgent questions, but the creature knocks on the boat again, more sharply this time, and the stranger vanishes back down into the cabin.

Just because he doesn’t know what else to do, Paul sticks the earbud in and says, “Hello?”

He doesn’t hear anything in response, though the next knock against the hull seems gentler. When he gets up to look over the side, he thinks he can make out a dark shadowy bulk directly below them. It’s not going anywhere, just twisting around restlessly in place. A tentacle reaches up almost lazily, at least as thick as the boat is long. _Thump._

Paul thinks, half at random, of playing against Pronger. This thing is only slightly bigger, and seems almost manageable in comparison. “Yeah, I’m having a pretty screwed up day too.” He hopes it can’t understand him, but just the sound of a voice seems to be doing some kind of good. “But this, uh, whoever he is, it seems like he’s taking good care of you. Just hang in there. And please don’t eat us,” he adds, in case the guy’s wrong about it being a vegetarian.

There’s a rapidly approaching hum in the distance--right, yes, helicopters. Because back there in the real world there are proper authorities, who people have obviously called.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Paul says, even if the creature can’t understand him. He yanks the mic off and leans down to look into the cabin. “Look, the Coast Guard--” he begins, and then forgets for a minute just what he came down here to say.

The cabin is--it’s not a cabin. It’s some kind of engine room, substantially larger than the _entire boat_ , with an unrecognizable pillar of machinery at the center.

“Gkh,” says Paul. He makes it it a few steps down before he has to sit down on the stairs, because seriously, there are limits, and he’s pretty sure he’s past his.

“Almost done!” The man slides out from under a control panel, spots Paul, and frowns. “What’s wrong?”

That could be a very long list. “The Coast Guard--” Paul begins again, then wonders if the words mean anything to this guy “--the military are on their way.” If he keeps eye contact, he doesn’t have to think too hard about the rest of the room.

“I was going to warn you about this,” the man says apologetically. “But you’ll probably want to be inside now anyway.” He throws a switch, and the room kind of--shudders, in a way that feels like it should be vertigo-inducing but isn’t. When Paul looks up, the open hatch above him is a sealed porthole, and the surface is rapidly receding above them.

“I think,” he says, suddenly very aware that he just lost an expensive custom-made surfboard, and still hasn’t eaten breakfast, and would love to be wearing something that isn’t a wetsuit. “I’d like to go home now. Please.”

*******

The--alien space submarine thing, whatever it is--drops Paul off on shore and disappears. When he finally makes it through his front door, he can hear his phone ringing; he seriously considers not bothering, but then he thinks about what might’ve been on TV this morning, and runs for the kitchen to pick up.

“ _Paul!_ ” Michiko is snapping before he can even greet her; there’s a shake in her voice, but someone who didn’t grow up with her would never notice. “The news keeps talking about some kind of monster on the beach down near you, why won’t you answer your damn phone? _”_

“I’m fine,” he tells her. Which is true. More or less. “I don’t think anyone was hurt--there’s helicopters and boats everywhere down that way, I’m just staying clear. Seems like it was just the one.” He’s got the phone tucked against his shoulder, trying to reach back and unzip with one hand while he talks. It’s not working so well. “Screwed up my morning workout. No big deal, I promise.”

“Do you need anything?”

Paul grimaces up at the ceiling as a plane whines low overhead, stabbing at his eardrums. He wonders how long it’s going to take them to give up and go away. “I need to talk to you,” he admits. “But it’s too noisy here--can I call you back sometime later?”

“Four o’clock _,_ ” says Michiko, not even a hint of a question in her tone.

“Yeah, okay,” says Paul, because what else can he say?

It’s somehow only eight-thirty in the morning. He’s still a NHL player for seven and a half more hours, for all the good it does him.

*******

He showers, puts in earplugs, and goes back to the kitchen in sweats to make breakfast. UNIT shows up to join the Coast Guard, which means twice as many helicopters buzzing Paul’s house. Between that and the earplugs, he’s not sure how long he takes to notice that someone’s outside rapping on the kitchen door.

It’s the man from the boat, and he has Paul’s surfboard with him. “This was in my coat closet for some reason,” he says. “I thought you’d want it back.”

Paul takes the surfboard, and--because he’s only human, possibly unlike some other people in this kitchen--asks him in and makes him a second batch of eggs. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“I do.” And yet he’s sitting at Paul’s counter, by all appearances fascinated by the food processor. “But the baby, you know, I think she likes you, and you just seem like--”

“Like what?” It comes out a bit too sharp.

“I thought,” the man continues, unfazed, “maybe you’d want to come along. Help me get her home safe.”

This entire morning has been completely absurd, and Paul doesn’t know why he’d want any more of it, but--he glances over at the phone. He will be an NHL player for seven more hours, and he has nothing else to fill them with, besides the endless racket of UNIT hunting snipe.

“I’m Paul,” he says.

The man in his kitchen beams back at him like this is the best gift he’s ever been given. “My name’s too long to bother with,” he says. “But you can make it Teemu for short.”

*******

The boat-turned-submarine is now a hulking black van parked outside Paul’s house--looking suspiciously like the van from _The A-Team_ , actually. “Chameleon circuit,” says Teemu proudly, even though Paul never asked. “She blends in wherever we land. You’d never know, would you?” He throws the back doors of the van open; behind them are the same stairs leading down to the same impossibly huge engine room.

“No,” says Paul, to be polite. He doesn’t want to think too hard about any of this. He just follows Teemu’s lead across the room and out the other side; it’s a little easier to deal with when he knows to expect it, but not by much.

There are hallways leading out to more rooms--hell, why not? If it’s already too big inside, why shouldn’t it be even bigger? “See? Safe and sound,” Teemu says. Paul doesn’t understand him until they turn a corner and find an entire wall taken up by the glass side of a water tank. A small enclosed lake, more like, because the vast shadow that drifts up towards them is kind of recognizable. And female, apparently.

The creature--Paul is resigned to never seeing the whole of her at one time--peers out of the tank with a lone eye, bigger than he or Teemu is tall. There’s no way to know whether she recognizes them, but at least she seems pretty calm for the moment.

*******

She starts panicking again in transit, which doesn’t seem to throw the ship off at all, though it makes a lot of noise. Paul puts the headset back on and sits in the corridor outside her tank. but her name is genuinely, physically unpronounceable--it’s apparently some kind of long gurgle. Anyway, being newly hatched, she can’t exactly answer, which he presumes is what the earpiece is for. So a conversation seems pretty unlikely.

He goes with the first thing he can think of that’s soothing and repetitive, which is telling her about playoff brackets from last year backwards. He used to use it as a memory test, until it rolled off his tongue so easily it was pointless. It _could_ be useful at some point in her life; who knows? And it’s easier than trying to understand whatever Teemu’s doing in the console room.

He’s made it back to 2004 (“Tampa over Calgary for the Cup in 7; Tampa over Philly in the East in 7, Calgary over San Jose in the West in 6--”) before she stops slamming herself up against the glass. It’s been a while, but Paul doesn’t remember babysitting being _quite_ like this.

Teemu comes hurrying down the hallway. “I heard all the noise. Is she all right?”

“Better. I think.” What’s _all right_ for a baby sea monster? “I was wondering, shouldn’t we be feeding her?”

Teemu shakes his head. “She’s still absorbing nutrients from the fluid she’s in, like she did in the egg. It’ll be fine until we get her home to her parents.”

“Where did you get the egg?”

“They’re very valuable. People steal them.” Teemu sits down on the floor next to him. “I stole one back. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Paul looks away, embarrassed. “You’re the first alien I’ve ever met who wasn’t trying to kill me. It’s hard not to be skeptical.”

“But you still came along.”

Paul methodically relaxes his spine, leans back against the wall, and crosses one ankle over the other. “I’m putting off a phone call,” he says, and stares up at the ceiling.

*******

Their destination proves to be a planet of reddish viscous ocean with only a few tiny patches of solid ground. The ship doesn’t need land, though; it can just submerge, same as it did on Earth. Paul sticks close to the porthole this time, squinting out into the ocean while Teemu rattles around at the console. Teemu’s reclaimed the headset and is chattering into it, apparently to someone who’s actually responding, but he looks up long enough to say, “You know you’ll see better from outside?”

“I can’t breathe that,” says Paul, in case Teemu genuinely doesn’t know.

“Of course not!” Teemu waves a hand. “But I can extend this atmosphere outside a little bit. Enough to let you out onto the hull.”

Paul is exactly foolhardy enough to not turn down an offer like that. “Don’t close the door on me,” he warns, all the same.

It’s like a tiny little world all on its own, the bubble of air atop the submarine (which, from outside, is a weird polyhedron that doesn’t really look like a submarine at all). It’s at once utterly surreal and perfectly serene. Paul sits down right next to the hatchway, in case he needs to get back down in a hurry for some reason, and waits.

At first he doesn’t even register the shadow looming up to meet them; it’s so huge that it just seems like the dark of deeper waters below him.

Then it _squirms_ and he freezes.

The baby dwarfs Teemu’s ship ludicrously when she emerges from below it. Her--parent, presumably?--makes her look just as tiny in comparison. It reaches upward with a tentacle like a writhing skyscraper, makes the ship tremble with the lightest of taps, and then gathers the baby up and just melts away with her into the ocean.

Paul feels like he’s done good work here, even though he really isn’t sure he contributed much.

He keeps peering over the side for a while, leaning out precariously and trying to catch more signs of movement. He isn’t sure how long he’s been out there when Teemu’s head pops up through the hatchway. “Ah,” he says, and gives Paul a long appraising look, like he expected someone else. “There you are.”

Paul is embarrassed to realize he’s still smiling; he wipes it off as best he can and sits back. “Well, I was going to take a walk, but.”

Teemu actually laughs at that, which Paul feels is embarrassing for both of them. “So, where to next?”

Paul blinks at Teemu, who’s looking back earnestly, like he expects an answer. “Who, me?”

“Who else?” Teemu shrugs and folds his arms on the lip of the hatch. “This is barely even a trip. I could take you anywhere you like, anytime, and have you back home in time for that phone call. C’mon, it’ll be fun, and you need to smile more.”

Paul almost smiles even at that. “You’ve decided that, have you.”

“It’s a good smile,” says Teemu, “trust me, I’m an expert.” If Teemu were human, Paul might think--nothing, he wouldn’t think anything in any case, he isn’t thinking anything now.

Except that he really doesn’t have much to go home to at the moment.

“Joke’s on you, then,” he says. “The only parts of space I know about are the parts that want to kill me.”

“So you’ve said.” Teemu looks apologetic. “A lot of planets go through stages like yours, you know. Advanced enough to broadcast their existence to the universe, not advanced enough to get off the planet if they need to, so everyone suddenly wants to invade. It’ll pass.”

“Yeah, well.” Paul thinks it over for a minute or two, staring out into the ocean even though all signs of life are long gone.

“It’s not all Daleks and Sycorax out there,” Teemu goes on hopefully. “Not even close.”

Paul drums his thumbs on his thighs. He has a feeling he’s missed something crucial here; it all seems too good to be true. But as nice as the scenery is, all he can see is the piece of hope that’s just been dropped in his lap. “Okay,” he says. “Sure, why not?”

“Anywhere you like,” Teemu prompts.

“I need to go to a hospital,” says Paul, and swallows.

“A hospital.” Teemu blinks, face closing off; whatever kind of answer he was expecting, it can’t have been this. Maybe he was just being polite. “Are you--never mind, you wouldn’t ask if you were okay, would you?”

“Yeah,” says Paul, more sure of himself. “The best hospital in the universe. There’s got to be one, right? Please.”

 

* * *

 

It’d be a lie to say he’s never caught himself wondering. There are more advanced planets out there, everyone knows it, and Paul’s far from the only person who’s ever wondered what they can do besides kill. What options there could be for him out there, if only he were able to get to them.

He might be the only human being so far to find out the answer, but that knowledge isn’t too satisfying on its own.

The entranceway is small, barely the size of a large closet, but the placid pale green of the walls is pretty distinctive. “Welcome back, Mr. Kariya _,_ ” it says, from somewhere invisible over their heads.

“Back?” Paul repeats. He glances at Teemu, who just shrugs.

A picture of him appears on the wall, accompanied by text too small and fast-scrolling to read. Maybe Paul hasn’t been giving the future enough credit for all-encompassing creepiness. “Preliminary scan and medical history indicate you wish to visit the neurology wing. Is this correct _?”_

There’s an expectant pause. “That’s correct,” says Paul. He wishes he knew where to look.

“You have no appointment,” the ceiling observes, “but a specialist will be free for consultation in eighty minutes. Is this acceptable?”

“Yeah,” says Paul, heart pounding. “Definitely.”

“We could get lunch first,” Teemu suggests. “Is there a cafeteria?”

“Cafeteria _,_ ” the ceiling agrees, and the opposing wall slides open to reveal--well, look at that.

The cafeteria is painted pale yellow instead of pale green, just for variety, and is equally sparse. There are long rows of tables, and people sitting at them--but no counter, nowhere that could lead to a kitchen, not so much as a vending machine. “Are there any people working here?” Paul wonders. “Staff, I mean.”

“Of course! If you want to talk to them. I think.” Teemu glances around. “Some people would rather deal with a machine when they’re upset. It all depends.”

Paul blinks at him. “You haven’t been here before, have you.”

“No,” Teemu admits, “but I’ve heard of it. You said take you to the best hospital in human history--and everyone says, whatever’s wrong with you, this is the place to come.”

“Sounds promising enough.” Paul sits down at a small table and watches Teemu sprawl into the chair opposite his. “How do we--” he begins, but then the table lights up just like the walls did, offering a menu.

Teemu frowns down at it a moment and says something in a language Paul doesn’t recognize; a plate of greenish steak appears in front of him.

Paul laughs, more out of surprise than anything. The relentless automation is actually starting to make him nervous, no matter how user-friendly. “Salmon and rice?” he tries, and gets a plate of his own. The salmon is edible but nothing special, which is pretty good as hospital cafeteria food goes. Teemu looks like he’s enjoying his steak, so presumably it’s actually supposed to be that color.

Paul takes this opportunity to really consider his current company. Sure, he feels out of place in his sweatshirt and jeans, but Teemu left the ship in a dramatic floor-length wool coat that’s currently folded over the chair next to his. He’s wearing a thick turtleneck sweater and pants tucked into tall boots, and looks overall like he ought to be captaining a wooden sailing ship instead of a time machine. He’s around Paul’s height but solid, clearly strong even under the heavy sweater. And by all appearances he wants nothing more in the world than to solve all Paul’s problems, whatever they are.

Paul wonders what this guy really wants, but he’s still going to take any opportunity he can get out of this.

*******

When they're done eating, the elevator takes them away--is it an elevator, Paul wonders? it doesn't seem to actually move per se--and deposits them in a waiting room with a row of benches. There are a few other people sitting around and waiting, none of them looking like they particularly want to chat. Paul finds a bench that he and Teemu can have to themselves.

"Hey," says Teemu after a minute of fidgeting. "So what are we here for, exactly?"

"I don't really want to talk about it," says Paul. He really, really doesn't; it's not personal. It's just that as long as the word _retired_ doesn't come out of his mouth, he's not, technically. He doesn't know how he'd begin to explain that to someone he's known for all of a day.

"They're very good here," says Teemu. He pushes his overgrown hair out of his face; it falls back into place immediately. "I've met people who were treated here, all much better now."

"Did they mention how creepy it was?" asks Paul, and then glances up at the ceiling, wondering if it heard.

Teemu laughs. "No, nobody did. You're right, though. I always thought it'd be, I don't know. Friendlier?"

"I'd settle for _anybody_ at this point," Paul admits. They haven't seen a nurse, a janitor, anybody. "Are we sure there are even doctors here?"

A door opens just then, and announces a name--all clicks and gurgles, not unlike the baby kraken (who Paul still can't stop thinking of as Pronger). The person who gets up could be a miniature cousin of hers, honestly, a puny eight feet tall and gliding through the door on long tentacles.

Paul’s been carefully avoiding thinking about where and when he is. He can't, now that he's letting himself look at his fellow patients: a swirling cloud of green gas contained in a long robe, something like a child-sized millipede curled up asleep on a hovering stretcher, sheltered by a glimmering bubble of energy. Others are humanoid, but none as precisely human-like as Teemu.

It doesn't matter. This is weird, but weird is normal on Earth these days; Paul's just taking it to an extreme. He's going to see this specialist, he's going home again, and if it all works out he's keeping his job. He can put up with one day of weird, for that.

"Kariya," says another door, hissing open. There's an exam room behind it.

Despite himself, Paul glances over at Teemu. "You know you're my ride home, right? You'd better still be here when I'm done."

"I'll be here!" Teemu glances around the bare white room, without even any magazines, and his brow furrows. "Well. I'll be around. I didn't bring you here just to leave you behind, Paul."

"Okay," says Paul, as sure as he's going to be, and gets to his feet. "See you soon, I guess."

"Good luck!" says Teemu, catching Paul's wrist for a second. His hand feels freezing; Paul jumps. "Whatever you need, I hope--"

Paul blinks; Teemu’s eyes are warm and sincere. "Yeah, me too."

*******

The--doctor? Nurse? Paul doesn’t know how to ask--is wearing something a lot like a Bluetooth earpiece, and it’s disconcertingly normal next to...well, the entire rest of the building. Two earpieces, Paul notes, one in each ear, pulsing with a slow blue light--and surely by now people should have, whatever, implants or something? The incongruity is soothing, though; he's _used_ to doctors with earpieces. It lets him pretend he's somewhere remotely familiar.

He's maybe staring a little too hard at this woman's ear; he should cut that out.

The blue light reminds him of something, but he can't place it. Probably nothing, just nerves. By now he should be used to his brain pulling the rug out from under itself.

"I'm sorry," the doctor says, but she looks more distracted than sorry. "We thought you understood."

"Understood what?" Paul wonders if he's missed part of the conversation.

"Human brain tissue can’t be restored," she says, still flat and unsympathetic. "Everyone knows that, Mr. Kariya."

"Right," says Paul. "Yeah, of course." He absolutely does miss whatever she says next.

He's not actually worse off than he was yesterday, right? This is what he knew he was risking, traveling five thousand years in a fucking flying speedboat to be told he's unfixable.

Or maybe this is what he deserves for letting himself hope. What was he going to do, anyway, go home to 21st century Earth with a miraculously healed brain and hope nobody asked any questions? What Paul wants is to be back in the NHL, and he realizes--too late--that that was never going to happen no matter how this trip turned out.

"Mr. Kariya," she’s saying to him again. "If you could please--"

"Yeah," says Paul, tuning back in to the conversation. "I know you probably need the room, can I just have a minute here?"

"Did you come alone?" This seems like about the closest thing to an expression of sympathy this woman's capable of.

Paul doesn't really know how to answer that. "There was a guy," he says vaguely. "Uh, he gave me a lift here, I don't really know him."

"He can be located," she says, her voice getting duller by the second. If Paul didn't know better he'd think they weren't even in the same room. Hell, it's the 70-somethingth century. She could be a hologram. He could be talking to an AI or something. Maybe it’s rude to ask.

Or he could have just met someone even more awkward than himself; after all, if she was part of the building, she wouldn’t need earpieces, would she?

“You know,” says Paul, standing up suddenly from the exam table, “I think I’ll just go find him. Sorry for wasting your time.”

“Please sit,” says the woman, reaching for his arm. The blue lights in her ears are pulsing faster, hypnotically, and she doesn’t sound like a person at all any more. “Hospital policy requires you to be fully processed.”

Paul flinches away. “Seriously, no thanks.”

She tilts her head, as if confused. "Your damage will no longer be an impediment after processing."

"Well, fuck you too," says Paul. Which is a bad idea, but the least of his problems; another door is opening in the opposite wall, and something behind it sounds a lot like grinding machinery.

Paul scrambles backward and the door to the waiting room opens automatically, to his immense relief. The doctor-machine-whatever doesn't follow.

He's so angry, at the woman and at the universe in general, that it takes a minute for him to remember to be scared. When he pulls himself together and looks around, Teemu isn't there; the crowd of patients from before is gone. Which means all those people have already been called in for their own appointments, and there’s not much Paul can think of to help them.

When he looks out the door, the hallway is blank and white in every direction, and it's not comforting at _all--w_ hat was wrong with whoever designed this place? But the solitude lets Paul pretend he can spare a moment to pull himself together.

He wishes he knew where to find Teemu. Yeah, the guy’s an unknown factor, but he’s not actively trying to kill Paul, which makes him the most reassuring thing in this building right now.

Paul picks a direction eventually, because he has no other options and he doesn't know what else might come through here. There's a desk around the corner that he chooses to think of as a nurses’ station, with, mercifully, no nurses. It does have a door behind it, which Paul sticks his head through, despite whatever better judgment he's got left.

The door opens to a vast space that is absolutely not a break room. Paul gets a glimpse of long stretches of catwalks and machinery. He’s hesitating between curiosity and the most sensible option, which is finding Teemu and getting him to take Paul home. Home, where he’s going to have to--well, he’s going to have to. Anyway.

Teemu may have wandered off, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to just ditch Paul entirely, so if Paul can just trust one of these elevators to get him back to where they left the ship, presumably Teemu will turn up and they can get out of here. Alternatively, if Teemu _didn’t_ wander off on his own, then Paul’s fucked, so he’s going to assume the most productive option until further--

"Mr. Kariya," says his doctor, finally appearing around the corner, with the measured stride of something that knows its victim has nowhere to go. “Please calm down and cooperate.”

\--further notice.

Paul does the least predictable thing he can think of, which is to dodge through the door and slam it behind him, bracing his full weight against it. In a big space like this, there's got to be someplace small where he can keep out of sight and figure out his next move.

"Paul!" says Teemu happily, head appearing over the edge of the catwalk. "I'm sorry, I guess I wandered a bit. I didn’t think you’d be done yet."

" _Shhhh_ ," says Paul frantically, dropping onto his knees to see over the edge. There's a ladder there, thank God; Teemu's not just dangling. He slides down a few rungs without prompting, letting Paul climb down after him and out of sight.

"It's okay," Teemu says from below him; Paul is so decisively not okay that he nearly laughs at this. "They're all dormant. For now." He hops off the ladder, long coat trailing after him, and heads along a narrow walkway. “Did you know, those hover gurneys they have here, you can rewire them to go fifty miles an hour?”

“No,” says Paul. “I did not know that.”

“Well, it seemed like you’d be in there a while, and there was an empty stretcher and all those long hallways, I thought I’d try--aha!” Teemu drops to his knees on the ground, so suddenly that Paul almost trips over him, and starts working a panel loose. “It was fun--you should try it! But it seems like all the empty ones are programmed to return here. So here we are.”

Paul allows himself a long pause to take all of this in.

“You know,” he says at last, “I think I was promised no Cybermen on this trip.”

“I promised no Daleks and no Sycorax. Nothing about Cybermen, technically.” But Teemu looks up and smiles ruefully.

He seems to be digging pretty far into whatever wiring’s behind that panel, so Paul gives up and sits down, squeezing into the narrow space next to him. “If I knew what to look for,” he says aloud, “if I’d met them before--other people must have too. Other people who came here looking for help. A few of them must have gotten away, right?” It’s not like there’s anything like UNIT to turn to here; just this fucking honey trap, luring in scared people to have their problems _fixed_ by being turned into robots. “Can we stop them?” He feels very small as he stares out into the vast hollow core of the building--and then he starts to make out individual Cybermen, standing in vacantly staring rows, and he has to look away. “Can we--I don’t know. Is there a power source we can cut off, stop them from converting any more people?”

“Hold this.” Teemu passes him a chunk of circuitry, cut wires jerking and sparking. Paul holds it gingerly by the safest-looking corner. “What do you know about Cybermen?”

“I know where to hit one with a stick to slow it down,” Paul offers, and Teemu laughs, briefly. “I know they invaded Earth a few years ago and started turning people into more of them, and then they all just left again for some reason. I--what are you even _doing?_ ”

“Trying to locate a power source we can cut off.” Teemu pulls his head out of the wall and grins sharply up at Paul. “To stop them converting any more people.”

Paul startles himself by smiling back. “Okay,” he says. “What do we do?”

“Well,” says Teemu, “give me that back.” He reaches a hand out blindly, and Paul does his best to hand over the circuit board thing without electrocuting either one of them. “We can’t just destroy the place. We don’t know who else could be here. But there’s got to be a brain somewhere, right? A central controller. I’m trying to figure out where that is.”

“Most dangerous place in the building, I bet,” says Paul darkly. Something flits through his peripheral vision; he jerks around to look, but nothing’s there.

Then he’s distracted by a loud hiss and a spray of sparks, and Teemu curses in a language Paul doesn’t know. His coat starts smoking alarmingly, but he shrugs it off his shoulders before Paul can say anything.

Paul pulls it the rest of the way off and tosses it to the side, not sure how else to be helpful. There’s a rattle and a squeak, and this time he _definitely_ catches a glimpse of something gleaming as it zips out of sight. “Hey,” he says, reaching behind him to pat vaguely at Teemu’s arm. “I thought you said everything in here was dormant.”

“It should be, don’t worry. Almost there.”

“Teemu,” says Paul, deliberately, “I’ve got some bad news for you.”

The thing staring back at him looks more or less like a giant metal pill bug, but it has the same eyes as a Cyberman, empty and black and shaped disturbingly like there’s a tear dripping out. Unlike a Cyberman, it has a lot of long sharp teeth.

They consider each other a moment. Then it leaps at his face and Paul kicks it away by reflex. It shrieks, painfully shrill, and clatters over the edge of the catwalk into nothing. Way down below them, he can hear the unmistakable hum of something huge and mechanical waking itself up.

“What did you _do?_ ” Teemu demands, finally condescending to pay attention.

“I think we woke something up.” Paul is on his stomach, peering over the edge. Most of the Cybermen down there are still dormant, but there’s a ripple of movement across from them, figures twitching to life. His skin is crawling. “Did you find what you needed?”

“Close enough,” says Teemu. “Come on, stop lying around, we’re going.”

“Are you sure?” Paul glares up at him, but once again he doesn’t really have the time to be circumspect. There are Cybermen climbing up towards him; one of them gets off a shot that misses Teemu’s shoulder by a hair.

“What?” says Teemu hopefully, reaching a hand down to help Paul up. “Don’t you trust me?”

“God, no,” Paul says , and takes his hand anyway.

*******

The whole place is waking up. They make it back out the door Paul came through, but there are Cybermen advancing along the hallway from both directions, identically blank-faced, greeting Paul and Teemu with a hail of--whatever it is they fire out of their arms. Lasers or something; it doesn’t matter. Paul ducks down behind the unoccupied reception desk, hauling Teemu down after him. A shot burns the corner off it and ash falls into Paul’s hair. “This thing isn’t going to hold up,” Paul says, peering around the side. “Do you think--oh, god _damn_ it.”

Teemu presses tight behind him, trying to see over his shoulder.“What?”

Paul risks another glance around the desk at the empty gurney floating head-on towards them. He hates this already “How quick can you jump?”

As it turns out, Teemu can jump pretty damn quickly. The coat doesn’t hurt either, swinging dramatically behind him as they vault over the desk and catch the gurney in midair.

Whatever Teemu’s doing to its mechanism isn’t nearly as instantaneous, though, and the bubble around it hisses and spits under fire from the row of Cybermen now pinning them in place behind the desk. “Meant to hold in atmosphere,” Teemu says distractedly over the racket, “not _this,_ ” which isn’t very comforting when they’re just hovering in midair, sitting ducks behind the force field equivalent of tissue paper.

“Teemu,” says Paul, shielding his face uselessly behind his arm--and then he chokes on a yell as the gurney rockets forward, scattering Cybermen like dominoes. Teemu lets out a triumphant whoop of laughter, though he grabs at the edges of the gurney as it careens around a corner. Paul considers asking about seat belts, thinks better of it, and just scrambles for a handhold of his own. "Can you steer this thing?" he yells, over the overworked whine of the motors. "I thought you said they all go--"

"I'm working on it!" Teemu pulls some kind of small, unidentifiable tool out of his pants pocket and drops down on his stomach, jackknifing awkwardly to keep his legs within the force field without kicking Paul in the gut. The gurney takes another corner with a shriek--is it still accelerating?--and Teemu slides alarmingly to one side. Paul grabs at his ankle, fingers slipping against his leather boot. Teemu's hanging halfway off the edge of the gurney, prodding at something on the underside. "Now that I know, I can--" The motors blot him out with a particularly hideous squeal, but the technical garble that ensues probably wouldn’t mean anything to Paul in any case.

"Teemu," he calls again, since he's apparently the only one who's watching where they're going. "The wall--"

"I know!" Teemu yells back, but they're still hurtling full speed towards a very solid-looking dead end.

Paul hunches down again, bracing his head for impact. He catches a glimpse of a dark gap opening in front of them, but his head is still covered when they go rocketing through it and skid to a halt, several feet past the wall. The sudden stop breaks Paul's white-knuckle grip, and he skids forward into the front end of the force field to land in a heap on top of Teemu's legs.

"Can you please," says Teemu after a moment, squirming underneath him.

"Right, sorry." Paul pats his side absently, disentangles himself, and shifts back to the other end of the gurney, giving Teemu space to wriggle awkwardly back up and sit down.The view is admittedly pretty cool; they've come back into the naked mechanical core of the building through a different entrance. The ride is smoother now, but only because they're rising directly upward, a little faster than Paul would like to be moving towards something undefined but likely fatal. "Where are we going?"

Teemu folds his legs and glances upward. "Well, every computer has a central core, so that's where we're going. Stop its heart, right? I can blow out the computers without destroying the building."

"Got it," says Paul. "What do I do?"

Teemu smiles beatifically. "Well, that depends on how quick they show up to stop us."

"That's really helpful, thanks." Paul looks around. There are twitches of movement here and there, but nothing seems to have spotted them at the moment. "What if they're luring us into an ambush? Do they think like that?"

Teemu shrugs. "Then we won't get the place shut down by avoiding it, will we?"

"Oh, God," says Paul, thinking again of his mysteriously disappearing fellow patients. He wishes for an unpleasant moment that one or both of them had less of a conscience. Or, at the least, for a nice solid old-fashioned wooden hockey stick, although he doesn't know how he feels about apparently being the dumb muscle in this situation.

To be fair, it’s possible that Paul’s career choices have skewed his definition of “dumb muscle” a bit. But he managed to fend off a Cyberman once before, years ago, when it came marching into his living room; it’d be nice to have a tool he knows will work, is all.

They're nearing the top of the building, where a web of walkways looming overhead cuts off the view of what's beyond it. Paul can hear a higher, finer, mechanical hum, though, and there's a flickering glow the same bright blue as a Cyberman's mouth. Or that doctor's earpieces.

Teemu leans over again to fiddle with the controls, and the gurney slows to a motionless hover next to a walkway. Paul's so restless with adrenaline--not to mention sick of being crammed onto this gurney--that he almost hops off blindly; he thinks better of it and hunkers down instead. "Seriously, what's the plan here?"

Teemu makes a show of shading his eyes with one hand, surveying what's there. It's a tall tower of chrome scaffolding, extending up to the ceiling, with blue-tinged electricity crackling inside. It reminds Paul for a second of the control room in Teemu’s ship, but he’s too polite to say so. Anyway, there are no controls here--only a smaller tapering structure inside, topped with a glowing dome. "That," says Teemu, "is the building's brain. It had its own from the start. All they had to do was take it over."

"So this really was a hospital once? And my doctor--" Paul hesitates. “Was she an actual doctor?”

"I don't know," says Teemu. After a moment he adds, "Probably."

"Anyway," says Paul, embarrassed. "Your plan."

"It's all self-contained, see?" Teemu gestures. Paul doesn't see, really, but he nods just to move the conversation along. "Processing core and power source. Overload that generator, the electromagnetic pulse knocks out the computer, Cybermen, Cybermats, all of it stops dead. Nothing damaged, no one else hurt."

Paul looks at him sidelong. "You just really love digging around in things, don't you."

Teemu beams at him. "Well, in a good cause--"

"Okay, so what do I do while you're tinkering?"

"Keep an eye out," Teemu says. "Oh, and if I find some kind of screen, can you work out a path back to the TARDIS? Or else we’ll just be wandering around after this thing goes dead."

“The what?”

Teemu blinks at him. “The TARDIS, you know, my ship?”

"Right, that. Find me a map and yeah, sure." Paul glances around. There’s nothing moving nearby, but the stillness is really getting to him. "Anything else I should know?"

"Of course! But I don't know what it is either." Teemu nudges him. "We'll find out together, come on."

They leave the gurney to head towards the central structure; it's a hideously exposed position, but there's not much they can do about it. Up close nothing looks more recognizable or user-friendly. "No controls or screens at all," Paul observes, only half a question.

"Well, no, since everything's connected." Teemu taps his temple. "Cybermen don't need to type."

"But _I_ do."

"Don't worry, I'll rig something." Teemu grabs Paul by the wrist and hauls him around to the other side of the scaffolding, There's no cover here and no way to see in all directions, either; Paul doesn't like how his chances as a lookout are shaping up, but he makes do with pacing back and forth while Teemu wriggles inside the structure and starts yanking out wires. "Here," he says after a moment, and something starts to glow in the air in front of Teemu's face. "Holographic database access. No keyboard, but I think with gestures--" He pokes at it and tweaks some of the exposed wires, and the glow resolves into a complicated tangle of hallways, like an imaginary ant farm. Which is a little too close to the truth, maybe.

Paul blinks, impressed. “What, you made it do that just like that?”

“Sure.” Teemu looks confused by the question. "See, we're here, we left the TARDIS back--here." He points. "Got it?"

"Got it," says Paul, though he's not really sure he _has_ got it. He spares a glance at Teemu, who is climbing up the inside of the scaffolding over Paul's head, to go do whatever he needs to do up there. Paul gives the glowing map a careful poke with his finger, and it rotates a few degrees; okay, he’s seen _Iron Man_ , he can figure this out. The TARDIS is parked in one of the lowest levels, on the opposite side of the building, but there are what look like emergency access shafts; even worst case, they won't be trapped here when the power goes out.

For the sake of thoroughness, Paul decides to retrace how they got here from that exam room. He thinks he knows how to zoom in on the diagram, but instead it shrinks and vanishes, replaced by a menu, and then another when he tries to get back to the map. "Shit," he mutters, and glances upward towards Teemu, but there's a high, growing whine coming from up there that suggests now isn't the best time to interrupt.

STAFF DIRECTORY, the menu says, BUILDING INFORMATION, OUTPATIENT FACILITIES, PUBLIC REFERENCE MATERIAL--

Huh.

Paul glances up at Teemu, looks around again to see if anything's on its way to dismember them yet, and pokes at that one.

After a minute, the clattering above him goes quiet. "Do you hear something?" says Teemu.

Paul looks up and cringes, realizing he’s let himself get distracted.

He doesn't see anything, but he does think he can hear something, maybe. A kind of--high chattering noise--

Paul clambers up the scaffolding to see better, though he carefully carries Teemu's complicated knot of wires along with him. He's only going to have so much leeway before the cables pull taut, but it's enough to give him a better angle on the walkway.

Even from a few feet up, it's hard to see much, but there's a ripple here and there on the polished silver metal, as though the floor itself is moving. Paul thinks he can guess what it is, even if he can’t see it properly.

He looks up at Teemu, who's once again thoroughly absorbed in his own work, several yards overhead. (Paul trusts his own balance on this thing; he hopes he can trust Teemu's.) "How well can you see from up there?"

"Well enough." Teemu shifts his footing and leans backwards at a truly alarming angle. "But I can't look out there and at this at the same time."

"Yeah, well, maybe hurry it up a bit." Paul edges up another foot or two. He feels secure enough where he's wedged himself in, but soon he's going to have to choose between height and having the hospital database handy.

HUMAN BRAIN INJURIES, it currently reads, and he can't help but keep glancing at it. If the doctor he saw was being controlled by the Cybermen, she might have been lying about his prognosis to direct him towards "processing." He can't miss the chance to find out anything he can, while he can.

The whole floor is rippling below them now. The Cyber--bug--things--are advancing in a swarm, from all directions as far as he can see. On top of all the other things Paul is trying to concentrate on, he's uncomfortably distracted by memories of gruesome statistics about piranhas and cows.

"Almost there," Teemu calls down. "There's nothing to worry about, Paul, the moment this goes off they'll drop like rocks."

"Great," says Paul, squirming higher, pulling the database cables to their limit. "At least I'll only get eaten up to the knees."

"They won't _eat_ you," says Teemu absently, like this is obvious. "They're carriers, they infect you with a Cyber-conversion virus. It'd take several of them to fully convert you."

" _Great_ ," says Paul again. He's up too high for the bugs to jump at him, but not by much, and he flinches every time one tries.

The database has a TREATMENT section, and he's trying to get what he can out of it. HUMAN NEURAL TISSUE, it says, IS REMARKABLY FRAGILE COMPARED TO THAT OF MOST INTELLIGENT SPECIES, which is not a promising start. THE HUMAN BRAIN HAS LITTLE REDUNDANT CAPACITY. WHEN HUMAN NEURAL TISSUE IS PERMANENTLY DAMAGED --

The bugs are starting to scrabble their way up the scaffolding after him. Paul kicks one away, and then another.

\--DATA IS DESTROYED, WITH NO RECOURSE FOR RETRIEVAL. HOWEVER--

"Done!" says Teemu. "Brace yourself."

\--DATA LOSS CAN BE FORESTALLED OR CONTROLLED--

"Wait," Paul blurts, kicking another bug away. His palms are damp; his grip is starting to slip. "Just a second, just give me--"

There's a crackle and a hiss from above, and a blinding burst of light; the cables spark and jump in Paul's hand, burning his fingers, and he swears and drops the wires. But then there's unmistakable silence from the chittering mass of silver bugs.

"Paul?" He jumps when a hand drops onto his shoulder; Teemu's climbed down next to him. Either he's very quiet, or Paul's even more distracted than he thought. "You can get down now. They're all dead."

Paul squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. It doesn’t actually do anything to clear his vision. "Should've covered my eyes."

"Need a hand?"

NO RECOURSE FOR DATA RETRIEVAL.

"I'm good," says Paul. He’s shamefully just a bit glad that he can’t see Teemu’s face; he’s afraid there might be pity there. "Just give me a minute. My eyes adjust kind of slowly."

*******

If he thought the hospital was eerily still when it was running on automation, the silence is positively stifling now. There are still emergency half-lights on; the building is just brain-dead, which is a turn of phrase Paul deeply regrets the moment it pops into his head. It's a long quiet walk from the top of the hospital down to the bottom, made longer because he doesn't want to risk climbing down any ten-story ladders while he's still blinking the stabbing glare out of his eyes.

"Oh thank God," he says involuntarily, when the remaining blur finally disappears from the edge of his vision. "I think I’m good now."

"I'll warn you next time," says Teemu. He only sounds a little bit like he wants to laugh.

Paul takes a minute to consider the ease with which Teemu said _next time_. “So does this kind of thing happen to you a lot?”

“What makes you say that?”

Paul shrugs. “You just seemed, uh. Pretty calm about getting swarmed by mechanical bugs.”

“It’s a big universe,” says Teemu cheerfully. “Sometimes things want to kill you. You can’t go taking it personally all the time. Hey, look at this."

"What?" Paul reluctantly stops in his tracks to watch Teemu poking at controls in the wall again. They're on the ground floor, near where they came in and just above the web of service tunnels where they left the TARDIS. Another few minutes and Paul could be back home, pretending that this was all a weird stress-induced nightmare.

He hasn't lost anything by coming here, he tells himself. He _hasn't_. It was worth trying.

"You know, this really was the best hospital in the universe, once." The tool in Teemu's hand lets out a little whine and a black line appears where a part of the wall is starting to open up. Paul tenses up; hidden doorways haven't boded well around here so far. "And of course it was because they had some of the best doctors. But it wasn't only that. Look." He reaches for Paul's arm, tugs him forward.

Paul looks, and finds that for the first time since they got here he's actually looking outside. It's nighttime, with only a reddish glow near the horizon to indicate that a sun just set or is just about to rise. There are five moons hanging in the sky, though, which is what makes Paul draw closer and really look. The moons range from tiny to enormous, one hanging so low in the sky that it looks like it'll fall down, another with its own spindly set of gleaming rings. The light from them is more than enough to reveal the landscape outside--not the sprawling city Paul somehow assumed, but a barren range of red and purple mountains. It’s like he’s looking out the window at the cover of a pulp novel, but he isn't; he's here, as far from Earth as he could possibly get.

“This isn’t really what you meant when you offered to take me on a trip.” Paul sighs. “Is it.”

“This was. The rest of it--not exactly, no.” Teemu doesn’t seem too put out about that, at least. “But did you get what you needed?”

Paul shakes his head. “I guess it was a slim chance anyway.”

Teemu doesn’t try to argue with him, thank God, but he does throw an arm around Paul’s shoulders and give him an oddly gentle full-body shake.

Since it’s already happening to him, and it does kind of help, Paul lets himself lean into Teemu’s shoulder for a moment. “I’m sorry--if you had something more fun in mind, I’m sorry I screwed it up.”

“Oh, I still do.” Teemu lifts his eyebrows hopefully. “If you’d like--?”

And, hell, Paul’s already left his planet to put off the inevitable; why not just keep going? “Yeah, okay,” he finds himself saying. “Wouldn’t want to take away your fun.”

“You say that like _you_ won’t have fun.”

Paul shrugs, doing his best to pretend this is perfectly normal for him. “Do your worst, then.”

*******

It’s been a long day by now--Paul’s lost track of the time, to be honest, but he knows he’s worn out. Fortunately it turns out the TARDIS has bedrooms. And--as Teemu explains to him--bathrooms, and a kitchen, and a wardrobe where Paul can get fresh clothes in the morning, and God only knows what else, because he’s too tired to follow the list after that.

“Wait,” says Paul suddenly. “Do you _live_ on this ship?” He’s just been assuming Teemu has a home to go to somewhere, whenever he gets tired of humoring Paul.

Teemu nods, leaning in the doorway. “Where could possibly be better than this?”

Paul sits down on the edge of the bed while he tries to frame a question that doesn’t begin _but you look human._ “So are you from somewhere, or--”

“Good night,” says Teemu. “Anything you need, ask the TARDIS if you can’t find me, okay? She can’t talk, but she’ll make sure you find your way.”

“She?” Paul echoes, but Teemu’s already closed the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

Just as promised, Paul finds his way around with eerie ease in the morning--as though the bathroom and wardrobe were being actively presented to him, as required. The wardrobe is a little overwhelming, being about the size of a city block and varied beyond comprehension, but he eventually manages to come up with a nice normal-looking pair of jeans and a t-shirt. It’d be fun to look around in there for its own sake, maybe, but he’s hungry, and he thinks he remembers where to find the kitchen.

Paul sidles back into the console room and forces himself to stop a moment and take it in; this trip won’t get any less weird if he tries to ignore where he is.

It’s really not an engine room like he thought at first, more like--well, Paul’s known a lot of guys who overpaid horribly to have their bachelor pads decorated with no idea of what they actually wanted. This looks like someone crashed a spaceship into one of their living rooms. If the living room was an enormous dome, anyway, covered from floor to ceiling in round recessed lights.

The middle of the floor, where the console stands, is sunken a few feet, with stairs down from the corridor where Paul is standing and then back up to the outer doors on the opposite side. But outside that, along the walls, is all chrome and leather furniture, masses of bookshelves, and a few scattered alcoves that look like workbenches. The central mechanical column roots down into the floor and up into the domed ceiling in a mess of electrical cables, but otherwise everything is sleek and clean and bizarrely retro-looking. Even the controls are detailed in chrome and leather and hardwood.

He’s very careful to touch none of it.

Teemu is sitting on a couch with his feet up on the railing, reading a book; the cover is some kind of bright moving hologram that looks like two robots making out with each other. Mercifully, there’s no visible title. "Find everything okay?"

"Yeah, so far." Paul goes into the kitchen. It isn't much of a kitchen, it turns out, only a little cubbyhole with a thing like a big vending machine. "Hey, how do I get food out of this?"

"Oh, I'll show you." There's a soft thump as Teemu drops his book onto the sofa and walks over to join him. "You just have to ask it and press here and here--although I can't promise it'll understand what you want."

"Scrambled eggs with vegetables," Paul tries. The slot in the front of the machine turns out a plate topped by a suspiciously homogenous mass, but at least it tastes right. "You're up early."

"I don't sleep much," Teemu admits. "There's just so much to do all the time."

Paul follows him back out to the sofa, glancing at the abandoned book as he sits down. "Like that?"

"What? It's fascinating."

Paul can't argue that, so he digs into his egg-adjacent breakfast for a few minutes. "So where are we going that's supposed to be so fun?"

"You're so skeptical," says Teemu. "We're almost there, actually. Let me show you something." He slides under the railing to drop down by the console, not bothering to walk around to use the stairs, and fiddles with a dial.

The ceiling of the room melts entirely away, along with the top of the control column; Paul jumps to his feet in alarm before he realizes Teemu's completely unconcerned, aside from looking at him for a reaction. "Holy shit," says Paul, obligingly and honestly. "What is that?"

Through the now-transparent ceiling, there's no void and no stars; only an endless riotous swirl of light and color that might, on a bad day, give Paul vertigo. On a good day, like today, he's merely disconcerted, and can't tear his eyes away from it.

"The Vortex," says Teemu. "It's what the TARDIS travels through, gets us anywhere and anytime. We're completely outside of the universe right now. It's a kind of place of its own. Things live in here, but we won't meet them, and you wouldn't want to, anyway."

"I guess you're used to seeing this all the time," says Paul. He leans on the railing in front of him, gaze fixed upwards.

"I see it all the time, but I hope I never get used to it." Teemu's smiling, when Paul looks back at him--smiling not at the view, but directly at Paul. "Impressed now?"

"Not bad," says Paul, but it comes off less jaded than he'd like. "But you still haven't told me where we're going."

Instead of answering, Teemu turns his attention back to the controls, doing something more extended and complicated that seems to require a lot of hopping from place to place around the console. The TARDIS shudders, and the Vortex melts out of sight above them, replaced by a more familiar--but no less spectacular--view of stars in a dark sky, half filled by a brilliantly green and gold nebula. "You're going to love this," he says. "At least, I think so. Go open the door and see."

"Love what?" says Paul. He wonders whether they've actually even landed anywhere, or are just drifting in space; God knows Earth never gets night views like this, even on camping trips he took as a kid, but hey, maybe other planets do.

"Go _see_ ," says Teemu, and Paul’s only known the guy for a couple of days but that’s enough to at least know Teemu doesn’t want him dead, so he goes to open the door.

Technically there's a planet there, but it's small and distant, far below them; there are a lot of little asteroids or something scattered around them, but that’s the only solid ground in view. Paul wobbles, startled, and braces a hand on the doorframe as he looks down. "What are we doing here?"

"Well, you like to surf, right?" Teemu clatters up the stairs behind him to look out at the view, which kindly spares Paul from being startled at someone suddenly being right behind him. "This was the best thing I could think of for you."

"I don't get it," says Paul. "There's no water, there's no air."

"There's air of a kind," says Teemu. "That planet down there, they expand their atmosphere all the way out here--and the TARDIS can do that for you, too. It's a big tourist attraction. Those half-formed stars in the nebula here, they have solar winds and tides, all of that. People can ride those on the right board, same as on water. But they all stick closer to the planet, where they sell all the equipment. Without a ship to bring you, you couldn't get all the way out here where it's empty."

"Oh my God," says Paul, and actually sits down in the doorway, forgetting to contemplate that his legs are dangling into literal void. "Did you just know all about this already, or did you look it all up just for me?"

Teemu coughs above his head. "I don't know much about you, you know? I did what I could."

"Oh my God," says Paul again, prickling with something that feels almost--but not quite--like acute embarrassment. "That's--way more than you had to do. I mean, you didn't have to do anything. Thank you."

"I got you a board to try," says Teemu hopefully. "Just a beginner one, I don't know what your preferences are, how any of that works."

Paul looks up at him. "Only one?"

"Not quite my kind of thing," says Teemu, and grins. "When I risk my neck, I like to do it in something with an engine."

Paul laughs. "Now that, I'd love to see."

Teemu reaches down and pats his shoulder. "I think we can do something about that, too."

*******

There's a bodysuit in the wardrobe Paul can wear for this kind of thing, because of course there is. The board Teemu's rented for him is thicker than he’s used to, but otherwise it looks pretty familiar. "There's a tracer in it," Teemu says, "in case we get separated. You can press the inside of your elbow, here, if anything goes wrong."

“Why, where will you be?” Paul pulls his goggles down over his eyes; this feels like a thirteen-year-old’s idea of The Coolest Thing Ever. But the display gives him a quick-scrolling line of data that looks comfortingly like a wave report, and a view of the currents he can’t see on his own. Worth sacrificing his dignity for.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” says Teemu unhelpfully.

“Okay,” says Paul, takes a deep breath, and steps out the door onto the board hovering outside. His feet cling to it; he shuffles a step sideways, just to see how it feels adjusting his footing, and concludes there are magnets involved. (A Marty McFly joke springs to mind, and Paul discards it immediately and with great prejudice.)

The weightless feeling is almost familiar, pretty much like standing up on a board on water; then Paul looks down and remembers there’s genuinely nothing there, and wobbles dangerously for a second.

“Okay,” he says to himself again, more firmly. Something wave-looking is heading towards him; Paul leans into it and lets it lift him away from the TARDIS.

He’s been rollerblading a couple of times, and this feels much the same: maddeningly familiar-but-not, in how Paul’s muscles know exactly how to move him a certain way and yet something different keeps happening. It’s not even the emptiness under him that takes getting used to, it turns out--it’s the lack of a horizon, the way the current keeps sweeping him upside down and it feels exactly the same as being right side up. He’s focused for a while on figuring out how to keep himself oriented, which is why he forgets to keep an eye out for whatever Teemu’s up to.

At least, until Teemu zips past and loops around him in a little--God, Paul doesn’t know actual spaceships are called, some kind of flashy little speeder thing that’s clearly the spacegoing equivalent of a Ferrari with the top down. The brakes don’t screech when Teemu stops, but it feels like they _should._ “Well,” he says smugly. “Having fun?”

Paul takes this as an opportunity to push his goggles up onto his head and sit down on his board for a breather--and oh, okay, this is familiar suddenly, minus the Pacific Ocean and a giant baby kraken. “Yeah,” he says, and grins helplessly up at Teemu. “Yeah, this is pretty amazing, thanks.”

The honesty is worth it, for the way Teemu lights up in return. “Take as long as you like,” he says, and turns a mocking corkscrew around Paul before zipping away again; Paul laughs, pops back up, and rides Teemu’s wake for a minute before veering off to check out the asteroids drifting nearby.

Navigating around rocks is more complicated--not really something Paul’s ever needed to do on water--and it’s only because he’s going so slowly that he catches a flutter of movement on the surface of one. He coasts to a halt, turns and looks again, and yeah--something is definitely moving there, where he’s pretty sure nothing should be living.

It takes a bit of maneuvering, but he figures out how to set down on the rock and detach his feet from the board. The asteroid is just barely big enough for gravity to hold him down to the surface, and Paul treads carefully as he wanders away from his landing spot, looking for the source of the movement. "Hello?" he says; it's reflex, even in this thoroughly surreal context. "Someone here?"

There's a rustle off beyond a ridge of rock, just outside of his vision. Paul quietly curses the recent loss of his self-preservational ability, and goes to see what it is.

It takes a moment, but he locates the source of the movement just past the ridge--something twitching in the shadows of a deep hollow. Paul tries to squint in from the edge of the crater, but he can't see a damn thing, so he clambers cautiously down to investigate, wishing he had a lamp or something with him.

His first thought is jellyfish, but that isn't quite right; but the creatures are soft and shapeless, plastered to the side of the crater. There are a few small ones flattened against the rock, one larger one flitting anxiously around them in midair, and there are colors quivering and blurring inside their bodies, slow and muted. The creatures twitch and draw back from him, even the one that isn't trapped, and maybe it doesn't mean anything, but Paul takes a placating step back all the same.

He thinks about it a moment, then presses the spot Teemu showed him on the inside elbow of his suit.

Teemu arrives a few minutes later, looking like a pulp hero as he lands his nimble little one-person ship and hops out in his long dramatic coat. Paul feels very undignified in comparison, in his tight-fitting quasi-wetsuit. "Having fun?" says Teemu.

"Absolutely, thanks. But I was wondering--does anything live on these asteroids, do you know?"

Teemu pulls his coat more tightly around himself. "Not on them, no. I don't think so."

"It's just that I think something's wrong," says Paul, and leads him over to the crater to have a look.

"Oh, no," says Teemu, crouching down at the lip of the crater. "These things--they live in empty space, generally. They can't survive in gravity for very long, too delicate. The solar wind must have washed them up here."

"Like a beached whale," says Paul. "Can't we--they're too delicate to touch, I guess."

"I think you're right," says Teemu sadly.

"Okay, but look. If they washed up here, isn't there a way to wash them away again? With the currents, or--can the TARDIS move this rock into the wind?"

Teemu stares at him a moment, and then thumps him gently in the arm. "You know, I think she could. With her atmosphere bubble extended this far. Come on, let's try."

"I'll stay here to see if it works," says Paul, and sits down on the edge of the crater while Teemu goes back to his ship. He needs a minute here, just to cope with the fact that he's sitting on an asteroid looking at space jellyfish. It looks like they might be twitching more feebly; he wonders if the littler ones are babies.

It's hard to tell, without a watch, how long he sits there--it can't be more than a few minutes, but they're very long minutes. And then the sky starts to rotate, slowly, as the asteroid changes path and orientation without apparent cause. Paul can't feel the breeze, if breeze is the right word for it, but his abandoned board hums and rises a few feet above the ground. The creatures clinging to the rock face bulge out and then detach one by one, filling out into rounded blobs as they drift away. Their colors brighten, too--Paul could swear the biggest one is glowing gently as they escape from the asteroid's thin shell of atmosphere.

*******

He rides the currents back to the TARDIS and brings the board back inside, propping it against the wall by the door like he would at home. “Hello?”

“Did it work?” says Teemu, from the controls below.

“It did,” says Paul. “It worked perfectly.”

“See, that was you! You did that, you had the idea that saved them.” Teemu comes bounding up the stairs to meet him and stares. "Oh, no," he says, trying and failing not to laugh. "I'm sorry, I should have warned you. Look at you."

"What?" says Paul, alarmed; he looks up from trying to figure out the mechanism that'll open his suit at the neck so he can get out of it. "What's wrong?"

"Your face," says Teemu regretfully. "It's all burned." He touches a finger to Paul's jaw, inspecting him more closely.

Paul stays extremely still, which seems like the only safe way to react to that kind of contact until it stops. "Is it serious? I don’t usually burn much."

“Doesn’t look too bad," says Teemu. "It'll heal up just fine, the TARDIS infirmary probably has something for it. Here you go," he adds, and gives a sharp tug to the collar of Paul's suit before stepping back to a safe distance.

The suit splits open, along an invisible seam curving from the collar down over Paul's chest. "Thanks," says Paul, frozen up a moment longer--half in startlement, half in discomfort at being reminded that he has to go _home_ after this.

Well, he could go home. Or he could go literally anywhere else and do anything else.

"You know, I wondered--"

"Anything," says Teemu easily.

Paul catches himself fidgeting with his suit, and stops; he's afraid something indecent will happen if he accidentally opens it any further before he has a change of clothes handy. "I mean, I don't want to change your plans or anything."

"But?"

"Wherever you were going next," says Paul. "Could I come along? Just out of curiosity. You said you could get me back to the same time we left, so--"

"Of course I can! Easy." Teemu beams at him. "You can stay as long as you like."

“Great,” says Paul, numbly; it sounds inadequate, but this is all so surreal. “Thanks, I really--I mean it, that means a lot.” He hesitates. “And you’re sure you don’t mind me staying around here for a while?”

“You’re good company,” says Teemu, like this is obvious. “Just because I’m not going anywhere in particular, doesn’t mean wandering around isn’t more fun with company.”

“You really did all this for me,” says Paul, just to triple-check. “Just to--well, to cheer me up, after the hospital and the Cybermen and all of that.”

“I did it because I thought you’d enjoy it,” says Teemu, a bit evasively.

“I still don’t know what I’m doing here,” Paul admits. It’s true twice over; he doesn’t understand why Teemu asked him, or why he accepted. But it’s as good as a yes, all the same.

Teemu shrugs. “Then I guess we figure it out as we go.”

 

* * *

 

For the next few weeks Teemu keeps Paul more than busy enough; maybe he’s caught on that Paul needs the distraction. Teemu has a seemingly endless list of dream destinations--a jungle with an advanced civilization of sentient trees, a gas giant with inhabited rings, an honest to God naturally occurring Dyson sphere. It doesn’t cheer Paul up, per se, but he can forget _why_ he’s grieving, for half an hour or so at a time. Sometimes even an hour.

Naturally that’s when it all catches up with him, or at least that’s what it feels like. The months of feeling relatively okay whatever the scans showed, plus time spent hoping that living in the TARDIS was somehow doing him good--it all comes crashing painfully down on him one morning.

He swallows some of the painkillers he brought with him from Earth, and has just managed to doze off when Teemu comes crashing through the door. “We’re here!”

Paul groans and pulls a pillow tighter over his head. He wishes, with distant guilt, that he could remember what _here_ they’re supposed to be at. “Not today,” he says, muffled into the pillow. “Please.”

“Paul?” says Teemu, miles more gently. “What’s wrong?”

“Headache,” he says shortly, like calling Stonehenge a pebble. “Teemu, the door--”

The door shuts a moment later; the sound is grotesque, but the return of darkness more than makes up for it. The mattress dips under the weight of a second person. “I could take us to a doctor?”

Paul shakes his head, dislodging the pillow.

“This is why the hospital? Paul, you could have said.” Teemu’s voice is barely a murmur now; his fingers are unexpected but blessedly cool against Paul’s forehead. “Is this--”

“It’s all right,” says Paul, an honest acquiescence if a hollow reassurance. It doesn’t hurt any less, but the touch is at least a pleasant distraction.

“I could help,” Teemu offers, after a minute. “Tell me if you mind.”

Paul grumbles a wordless question, already tired of conversation for the day.

In response Teemu’s hand settles, spread across Paul’s forehead, and after a moment the pain recedes. It isn’t gone by any means, but the weight of it eases enough that Paul can’t keep back a gasp of relief.

“Thanks,” he manages, half muffled in the pillow; he doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t have the energy to ask.

Teemu stays for a long time, silent and still apart from his fingers moving through Paul’s hair--quieter than Paul thought he was even capable of. And if Paul tucks himself back a little further to feel Teemu’s thigh solid against his shoulder--well, he’s sick and he can’t really be held responsible, can he.

*******

Okay, so maybe he’s been lonely and stressed, and Teemu is good for a whole locker room’s worth of casual physical affection that’s been sorely lacking in Paul’s life this past year. Maybe he’s letting himself slip a bit. Nothing will ever come of it; it’d be silly to try, when Teemu isn’t even _human._

It’s hard to know what to make of Teemu on this front. He’s more than free enough with affection, but that could mean anything. Paul has no idea how Gallifreyans go about pairing up, if they do at all, or how to ask about it. He can’t even be sure Teemu would still look human with his clothes off--though wondering about it _really_ isn’t helping, and he should probably leave it alone.

But there are very few upsides to losing hockey, and if one of them is letting himself look at other men for the first time in twenty years--well, Teemu’s right here to look at. It’s a step, that’s all.

*******

In any case he’s not feeling particularly frisky by lunchtime the next day, but he also no longer feels like he’s carrying a cannonball inside his skull, which is good enough for getting dressed and going to find food.

The TARDIS kitchen isn’t much, but then it doesn’t need to be to pop two people’s food out of a slot. (Paul should probably ask where the food comes from, one of these days, but in a place like this the food supply is just one minor miracle among many.) It gives him something more or less like oatmeal, but there’s nowhere to sit, so he takes it and looks cautiously into the console room next door.

It’s about as peaceful in there as it ever gets--the lights are at a tolerable level, and the control column is pulsing steadily, so they must be in transit again. Paul mistakes it for empty, at first. Then he hears a soft electronic trill and spots Teemu sitting on the stairs, poking at some kind of holographic display in his lap.

They sit together in silence for a while; Paul is almost done eating when Teemu looks up from whatever he’s working on and says, “So. Better?”

“Getting there, thanks.” Paul still isn’t sure how much he wants to explain; better to be cautious, surely.

After another minute the thing in Teemu’s lap buzzes in disapproval of something, and he makes a frustrated noise. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about it--I hope I’m not making anything worse for you, that’s all.”

“I don’t need you to be careful with me,” Paul snaps. “I’m not _dying_ , okay, it just--it is what it is.” He isn’t sure what reason he has to be careful, if he has nothing to be healthy for. After all he spent an entire year being perfectly careful, a model patient, and it won him back all of jack shit ground.

All this logic is absurd, and he knows that from long familiarity, but self-awareness hasn’t shut it up yet.

“I’ll let you know,” he concedes--though it doesn’t feel right, to give Teemu the same line he’d give to a coach. He just doesn’t know what else to say. “If it’s a serious problem, I’ll tell you, I promise.”

“You’d better,” says Teemu firmly, like he has any authority, which he doesn’t. He isn’t a coach, after all, he’s only Paul’s--friend, tour guide--well, whatever he is, he clearly worries.

“And thanks. For sticking around yesterday.” Teemu smiles, and Paul can’t help but relax in response. “What was that you did to me? To help with the pain.”

“Touch telepathy,” Teemu shrugs. “I thought I might as well try, you know?”

Paul eyes him warily, spoon abandoned in his bowl for the moment. “You can read minds.”

“Not very well. I’ve always been pretty weak--and I didn’t read yours anyway,” Teemu adds hastily. “I didn’t know what else to do for you.”

“Thank you,” Paul repeats. “But besides that--I’d rather you didn’t read my mind, you know, at all. I mean, if I get that bad again and you think it’d help, I guess that much is fine, but--”

“Of course not.” Teemu drops a cautious hand onto Paul’s shoulder. “Whatever you like.”

“What are you working on?” Paul asks, by way of a distraction, and inches closer to look at the glowing sheet of glass in Teemu’s lap.

Teemu shrugs. “Not work--just a game. Just wasting time while I waited for you to show up.”

Paul hums around the spoon in his mouth. “Show me?”

“You might not be able to--how many dimensions can you see in?” Teemu peers into his eyes, leaning startlingly close; it’s impossible to tell whether he’s genuinely forgotten or just being a dick.

“I don’t know,” says Paul, just to be petty right back at him. “Let’s find out.”

It’s called Tantane, apparently, some kind of logic game--a puzzle for one player or a competition between two, involving building towers and filling up a map with them. Paul has a nasty suspicion that the display might actually be four-dimensional, or something; the pieces have a way of twisting and disappearing and reappearing that makes his eyes cross, but after a while he gets a feel for where things are even if he can’t see them. Maybe that’s supposed to be the point.

On their third game in a row, Teemu frowns at the board and says, “Wait, why would you--what?” and makes a move that results in all the red towers dissolving out of the city they’ve built.

It takes Paul a moment to realize that he’s _won._ “Common sense?” he suggests, as smug as he can manage, because he’s really enjoying Teemu’s flare of outrage at losing. “It just seemed like a reasonable place to put it, stop making that face at me.”

“I’m not making a face. I’m two hundred years old, I don’t make _faces_ ,” says Teemu, and makes the face even more, until Paul is laughing helplessly into his shoulder.

*******

Inevitably, it turns into a thing, mostly because Paul doesn’t want to go exploring anywhere until he’s sure he’s feeling up to it--it’d be a real buzzkill to, say, go flying anywhere and have vertigo set back in. That doesn’t leave them much to do for a few days besides play Tantane, which is fine, because Paul feels like he’s picking it up pretty quickly. It’d help if he could play against the TARDIS, but she’s not like a chess computer at home; she can see the past and future as easily as the present, so strategy games are all but incomprehensible to her.

Teemu could cheat like hell doing the same thing, but he at least has the courtesy not to. As far as Paul can tell, anyway.

“Tell you what,” Paul says eventually, when he’s been more than adequately circumspect and the cabin fever is starting to set in. “Whoever wins today decides where we go next.”

In retrospect, he was just _asking_ to be made a fool of in that game.

“Next time,” Teemu says, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded smugly across his chest. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to think of somewhere you want to go.”

“We’ll see,” Paul says. “So where are we--” The TARDIS interrupts him by landing, with a groan and a thud. “That was quick.”

“I didn’t even tell her anywhere to go. Let’s go see.” Teemu, too, looks upward; then he stands up and heads for the door, catching Paul’s arm and taking him in tow. “And this doesn’t count as my turn.”

Five minutes later, Paul’s sitting perched on the edge of the console, watching Teemu skitter around and poke at about ten readouts simultaneously. “So where are we?”

“Nowhere, apparently.” Teemu gives a screen a sharp flick, and frowns when that doesn’t seem to clear anything up. “The TARDIS just decided on her own to land here--no, it looks like she was _called._ ”

“Like an SOS?”

“Maybe,” says Teemu, but he only frowns harder. “And she also says here isn’t, well, anywhere.”

Paul cranes around to read the screen, not that it does him any good either; it’s all still in a language he doesn’t know. “Let me guess, we’re going to go out and look for ourselves.”

“How’d you know?” Teemu seems more bothered by the mystery than by the thought of opening a door to _literally nowhere_ ; he practically bounces up the stairs to the door, pausing with his hand on the lever. “You did say _we._ ”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” Paul hops to his feet to follow.

As he’s coming up the stairs, Teemu swings the door open and starts to wave Paul through with a dramatic flourish--and instead doubles over with a yelp of pain.

“What is it?” Paul is there in a few moments.

Teemu’s gone pale, and the reassuring smile he offers looks a little thin, even as he straightens up into Paul’s hand on his shoulder. “Just dizzy for a moment,” he says, but if Paul knows anything he knows what it looks like when your brain feels like it’s turning inside out. “There’s definitely something not right here.”

Paul glances out the door; it’s mostly shadows. “Look, if it is an SOS or something--give me a flashlight, I’ll go look around by myself.”

“No, no, it’s fine, I’m fine.” Teemu almost makes it sound convincing. “I want to know what this is.”

“Well, if you insist.” Paul rubs absently at Teemu’s shoulder before taking his hand away. “It feels cold out there, let me just--”

He turns away for a moment to grab his sweatshirt off the hook by the door, and when he turns back Teemu’s already gone, leaving only the echo of receding footsteps to reassure Paul that he hasn’t actually vanished into thin air.

"Teemu?" Paul sticks his head out the door and looks around, but it really is chilly out there in the indeterminate darkness. He retreats back into the TARDIS, long enough to locate a flashlight for himself; he’d like flares or glow sticks or something, to keep from getting lost, but he can’t find any, so he just pockets a spare key and leaves. "Teemu," he calls again, but Teemu must have a good few minutes' lead now, wherever he's wandered off to. There's no answer.

It seems like they've landed in a maze, just endless dark cold hallways. There are doors, but most of them seem to be fake, and don't budge when Paul tries to push them open or turn a knob. One leads into what looks like an abandoned laboratory; another into a mechanic’s workroom. There's no dust, but everything has the feeling of a place long abandoned, until

_the floor shudders underneath his feet, the ceiling audibly cracks overhead, someone is shouting off in the distance somewhere--_

And then it's silent and still again. Paul shakes himself. He's superstitious, on the grounds that you can never be too careful, but he doesn't believe in haunted houses and he's not going to start now. Still, if there's a possibility there are other people here, that's his best chance for tracking Teemu down.

They haven't known each other _that_ long, but Paul still doesn't feel great about Teemu just wandering off without him. It seems, if anything, like something around here is knocking Teemu off balance, and Paul thinks he's going to feel a lot better once he figures out where the hell Teemu's run off to and why.

"Hello?" he calls again, because that certainly never ends badly in movies about haunted houses, and barely gets an echo. The darkness seems to stop both his voice and his flashlight beam dead in their tracks, but the hallways just stretch on and on. Whatever this building is, it must be immense, and he can't get any sense of an internal plan or logic to it at all.

_There's a roar like an explosion; a row of soldiers in long capes and ridiculous gilded helmets runs past. A chunk of the ceiling falls, and Paul covers his head and ducks instinctively_

but then everything is fine again, the ceiling is solid above him, there's still no one there. "What the hell?" Paul asks the empty corridor, and gets all the response he deserves, which is none.

He finally finds another working door at the end of a particularly long hallway, a large iris of a door that groans open when Paul works his fingers into the middle and pulls. He picks up the flashlight from where he left it on the floor and goes inside--his first thought is that he's walked onto a _Star Trek_ set. It's certainly similar in concept--an enormous oval control room, with a central command chair and rows of seats and control panels in front and behind, all facing a dead viewscreen. Maybe this is a ship, not a building.

Since he knows for a fact he’s not actually on _Star Trek,_ It takes Paul a minute to place why else the room feels so familiar; it doesn’t help that he only has the flashlight to get his bearings with, and-

_“Incoming,” someone yells from a control panel behind him, and then the whole room is shuddering with impact, Paul shaking with it and grabbing for support although he doesn’t even feel the floor move under his feet._

It’s quiet and still, if creepily free of dust like everywhere else. Paul lets go of the chair back he’s gripping, faintly embarrassed, and tries to recover his train of thought. Controls, right, maybe if he can figure those out he can work out what’s going on here. Doing anything about it--well, that might be a little beyond him, but one thing at a time.

Unfortunately, the controls here are just as chaotic-looking and incomprehensible as the ones on Teemu’s TARDIS. Paul manages to activate an external scanner, but it just says there’s nothing outside

_“Evacuate,” says the pilot grimly, invisible to him in her high-backed chair._

and nothing at all is happening. Which may even be true, depending on your point of view.

“Paul,” says Teemu, seemingly from thin air. “Are you okay?”

For a second, Paul thinks he hallucinated that too; then he tracks Teemu down, sitting on the floor with his back against a console. “Jesus,” says Paul. “You look like shit.”

Teemu laughs, but it’s ragged around the edges. He didn’t bother with his coat before leaving the TARDIS; he’s in his shirt, sleeves rolled up, and it makes him look oddly vulnerable. “Well, hello, Paul, it’s good to see you too.”

“This is a TARDIS,” Paul says, not a question. “Like yours.”

“Not too much like mine.” Teemu shakes his head, looks blankly up at Paul for a moment, and then shakes himself again. “A TARDIS is a kind of--it’s a knot tied up in space and time, and when one is dying, space and time distort around it. That’s what’s making me dizzy. It’s not dangerous, it’ll stop when. Well. When it’s over.”

Paul sits down next to him, pressed together at the shoulder and knee. “You can see that?”

Teemu nods. “There’s a place at home where TARDISes go to die, but there are dampers in the walls, so people can go in and out without--this happening.”

“A TARDIS graveyard.” Paul shivers; he knew Teemu’s TARDIS was alive, but somehow this particular ramification hadn’t occurred to him until now. “So what’s this one doing out here?”

“There was a war. A long time ago now,” says Teemu, a bit distant, like he’s reciting something memorized. “Against monsters so huge they could drain the life from entire worlds. So the Time Lords built battle TARDISes the size of worlds, to fight them. And ships are lost in war. Left behind.”

“Like this one.” Paul stares up at the ceiling. “Okay. So why are we here?”

Teemu is fidgeting next to him, drumming his fingers on his thighs. “She’s old,” he says. “Dying alone like this--she keeps looking back at her old crew, she called us here just to see another TARDIS. I can feel her in my head, Paul, she’s been lonely out here for a very long time.”

Paul glances sideways; Teemu looks exhausted, eyes bleak. “Are you okay? Could you shield yourself or something, if you have to?”

“And leave her alone before she goes?” Teemu sounds appalled. “Of course not.”

Paul resists the urge to lean more heavily against him, as if they were settling in for storytime or something. All the same, he’ll feel better if he can keep them both talking. “So the Time Lords--that’s what your people are called? That’s, uh. Heavy sounding stuff.”

“I didn’t _want_ to be a Lord of anything.” Teemu’s voice sounds strained; his head must really be killing him.

Paul remembers what Teemu did for him last week, and leans on him after all. “So you left.”

“Stole a TARDIS, made a run for it.” Teemu shrugs, but he leans into Paul in return, hair brushing Paul’s cheek. “They won’t be happy with me if I go back, but why would I ever go back? It’s a miserable place, Gallifrey, and nobody knows how to have any fun. No ice cream, no puppies, no--that’s what we’ll do after this, okay? I’ll take you somewhere for ice cream.”

There’s another burst of panicked shouting behind them; Paul tries not to pay it much mind. “So you’re two hundred years old, you can read minds, anything else you want to share?”

“Well,” says Teemu after a moment. “I’ve got two hearts? Good for endurance and healing, but mostly for novelty value. Here, feel.”

He offers his arm, and Paul takes it by reflex. Sure enough, when he’s had his fingers on Teemu’s wrist for a moment, he can feel it--the beats coming in pairs. “And?”

“After that it gets pretty weird,” says Teemu unhelpfully. “And what about you? Are you ever going to tell me who you are?”

Teemu’s pulse, novelty or not, is remarkably soothing under Paul’s fingers.“You know plenty about me.”

“Since we met, sure. But--” Teemu counts them off on the fingers of his free hand. “What were you doing with your life, before that? Why did you leave your home? Why can’t you go back?”

Paul shrugs a shoulder. “Does it matter that much?” It barely even feels like his life any more, but then again neither does this, not yet. He’s not who he was, after all, and he’s still far from getting a handle on who he’s become--what he’s doing, what he wants, what he’s _allowed_ to want. And anyway, when he figures it out Teemu will probably be the first to know--who else has he got?

“Obviously it matters very much. But I won’t push you about it any more.”

Paul remembers, far too late, to let go of Teemu’s hand. “Could I learn to fly your TARDIS? Or do I have to be psychic too?”

Teemu twists around to consider him. “It’d help, sure, but I think you could still learn. Why, do you want to?”

“Sure,” says Paul, and tries to offer him a smile, despite the echo of something exploding down the hallway. “Have to pull my weight if I’m going to be sticking around with you, don’t I?”

 

* * *

 

It turns out that Paul and the TARDIS actually get along pretty well. He’s never been at his best with technology or with people, but the TARDIS is enough machine to be straightforward to work with, and enough person to be patient when Paul screws up. Which is often.

In the meantime, he starts getting used to being aboard; it's easier now that he's starting to get an idea of what kind of ship he's traveling on. The TARDIS interior is seemingly infinite and never quite the same from day to day--as rewarding to explore as any planet Teemu lands them on, and generally less dangerous. Paul finds a gym, which does wonders to make him feel at home, and about ten incomprehensible laboratories and workshops, which do somewhat the opposite. There's a laundry room, though he doesn't understand why, because the clothes he keeps in his bedroom all seem to clean themselves spontaneously overnight. A sickbay. A room containing nothing but a variety of hot tubs. And so forth.

He spends a few hours trying to figure out where Teemu’s room is, but never does; the guy must sleep _somewhere_ , but the TARDIS won’t show Paul where.

There's a library, too, an architectural nightmare in its own right. Paul hasn't explored it much yet, but it's handy when he has questions--the TARDIS can't talk to answer him, but she can provide him with books on whatever he needs. Mostly he uses this to come up with destinations when he beats Teemu at Tantane, which does happen every so often.

Not always, though, and on a day when Paul's just not in top form, Teemu beats him soundly at Tantane and then wins again with ease when Paul demands to play for two out of three.

“There’s this festival on Centerix B,” Teemu says. “Only happens once every thousand years, nothing like it anywhere. And nothing that could possibly try to kill us this time. I promise. It’s very peaceful.”

Paul looks heavenward. There’s no guidance there, but there is a rumble of thunder; it’s raining again somewhere in the upper library stacks. He got caught in snow flurries in here once. “Do you jinx us on purpose? Is that it?”

“Oh, come on, you’ll love it.” Teemu leans forward over the table, all ingratiating smile and hopeful eyes.

This is undeniable, because Paul loves everywhere Teemu takes him, at least until it inevitably starts trying to kill them. Anyway, he’s a sucker for that look, and he hates that they both know it. "I thought this was supposed to be your turn.”

'Well, yes."

"Then let's go where you want to go. That's the point, isn't it?" Paul props his elbows on the table between them. "It's nice of you to worry so much about what I'll enjoy, but I honestly want to see where you want to go. I mean, if you hadn't picked me up or I hadn't stuck around after, where would you be visiting next?"

Teemu opens his mouth, shuts it, hums thoughtfully. "Well," he says again.

*******

The next day, Teemu lands them in a desert--at least, Paul doesn't know a better word for it than that. If anything it looks a lot like Earth's Moon, cold-looking and gray under a deep night sky--except for the unmistakeable shape of what looks like a skyline, a little way off. "There is atmosphere out there, right?"

"Not very friendly looking, is it?" Teemu admits. "We can breathe, don't worry. What are you doing over there?"

"Every time I go anywhere with you something weird happens," says Paul, rummaging through the coat rack by the door. "I've been traveling with you for, what, a few months now? Every damn time. Last week it was lava, the week before that it was that man-eating aquatic wolf thing--"

"I don't do it on purpose. What are you _doing_?"

"Emergency kit," says Paul, and triumphantly produces the small pouch he's been keeping by the door. It isn't much, small enough to fit in the pocket of his jeans, but he feels better for having it handy. "Mostly first aid stuff, you know. Although some of this is stuff the TARDIS gave me for first aid gear--I don't know what half of it does, but it's better to have it just in case, right?"

Teemu shrugs. "Whatever makes you feel better."

Paul takes a seat on the stairs for a minute, just waiting for Teemu to finish up whatever he's doing and come over to collect his coat. "You'll see. It's always something."

*******

The desert is chilly at night--this is true of deserts on any world, as best Paul can gather. He huddles deeper into his sweatshirt; Teemu, who naturally runs cold anyway, leaves his coat hanging open. Paul figures they're in for a long walk, but the empty landscape is deceptive, and it's not so long until they're on the outskirts of the city. It's built from the same gray rock as the ground, as though it had sprouted up on its own, but it starts abruptly--there's wasteland and then streets and tall buildings, no transition between them, no suburbs.

It's utterly silent; oddly unsurprising, in this gray empty place. The city is dead. Paul has trouble imagining anything or anybody ever lived here; he realizes he's drawn closer to Teemu as they walk, the only other life or color in sight. "This is where you wanted to go?"

"Not where, exactly," says Teemu. "I'm looking for someone."

There's a birdlike chitter from near their feet. Paul startles--it's the first movement or noise he's seen or heard anywhere here--and stops to look down. There's a little golden robot at his feet, dinner plate sized at best with half a dozen legs, hopping in place--fidgety, almost, Paul would say. It's too spidery-looking to have a face, but he has the distinct feeling of being looked at, all the same. He crouches down to look back. "Teemu, hey. Look at this."

Teemu kneels down next to him and pokes a finger experimentally at the robot. It bumps its entire body up against his hand, like a headless cat; then it squeaks and runs away, vanishing around a corner. "Rude," says Teemu, but then there are more skittering noises, and glints of gold appearing around them out of nowhere. "At least it brought friends."

One friendly little robot was fine; several are starting to remind Paul uncomfortably of the bugs that attacked them in the hospital. Just because these ones don't have teeth-- "Doesn't mean they're friendly," he says.

"Oh, they're perfectly harmless," says a voice Paul doesn't know. "Just watching my back."

The new arrival is humanoid--not human, though, blue skin vivid against his green jumpsuit. He's unarmed--this is apparently something Paul automatically thinks to look for these days--aside from a tool belt.

A small corner of Paul's brain wakes up and expresses interest in the obvious muscle revealed by this guy's rolled-up sleeves. Paul hates that corner of his brain, just a little bit; after years of detente it's become a lot more difficult to ignore since he started traveling around with Teemu. He doesn't care to dwell on why.

"My name's Paul," he says, after what he hopes wasn't a conspicuously long pause. "This is Teemu. We're just here to look around, I promise."

"For business or pleasure?"

Paul blinks. "Sorry, what?" Belatedly, he gets to his feet, and notices Teemu following suit; he's starting to feel very weird about crouching in the dust and talking up to this guy.

"Archaeologists, journalists, historians? Or just curious?"

Paul nudges Teemu, who startles. "Oh--oh, just curious, actually, but. Really I was hoping to meet you."

"See," says Paul, aside to Teemu, "this is the kind of thing I like to be told in advance."

Teemu ignores him. "Paul, this is Dr. Wex Ivar! One of the most brilliant archaeologists in history."

"Well, that's a tall order," says Dr. Ivar. One of his little robots skitters up his leg, and he pets it absently. "One of the unluckiest, maybe."

"I love your books," says Teemu, unmistakably starry-eyed. "All of those adventures--those really all happened to you, didn't they?"

"Oh my God," says Paul, mortified and unnoticed. Then again, he insisted on Teemu choosing a destination, so maybe this is no better than he deserves.

"All of them, unfortunately," says Dr. Ivar. He doesn't honestly seem too broken up about it. "A man just wants to get some work done, you know, and then--" He spreads his hands and turns a smile on Paul, as though asking for sympathy.

"I'm sorry," says Paul. "My friend here, he's a big fan of yours, but I'm--not so familiar. I know the feeling, though."

"What are you looking for here?" Teemu asks. At a reproving glance from Paul he adds-- "If you don't mind showing us. I know you're very busy."

"I don't know what I'm looking for," says Dr. Ivar. "Not here. That's the fun of it."

*******

Dr. Ivar has a base of operations set up inside one of the bare buildings, one crumbling less than those around it. There's a cot in there, and piles of crystals he says are reference books, and a workbench with an assortment of tools. He has over a dozen of the little golden robots, too. Their purpose is still unclear, beyond being his eyes and ears; Paul suspects he really just keeps them around for the company.

He takes them up a long staircase--enough exercise that Paul's certainly not chilly any more--to look out a window over the city. The view's certainly impressive, if even more eerie than from ground level. "Have you heard of Geren Prime?"

"No," says Paul.

"Yes,” says Teemu, "but go ahead."

Dr. Ivar smiles and nudges a friendly shoulder against Paul's. "This planet was one of the first that humans tried to colonize, thousands of years back when you first developed interstellar travel."

"Thousands of years ago, right." Paul nods, looking out at the city. "Seems like a lot for a new colony."

"Oh, humans didn't build this. This was already here, already empty. And they tried and failed to build their colony in the shadow of this city."

Paul looks up into the sky, still dark. He wonders when the sun rises. It's hard to imagine a sunrise in this place, in the same way it's hard to imagine people living here. "What went wrong?"

"No food would grow," says Dr. Ivar. "Not in the ground, or in hydroponics, or any other way. Anything in sight of this city just withered and died, and they couldn't pick everything up and move to the other side of the planet, so they packed up and moved on instead. And that was the end of that. All these centuries, no one's ever worked out why the colony failed."

“You think you can work it out?” says Teemu.

“I think there’s a first time for everything, so why not try?”

Paul looks him over, curious. "So what have you found out?"

"I mean," says Teemu; he sounds uncharacteristically sheepish. "We can have a look around ourselves, you don't have to waste time talking to us. As much of an honor as this is."

"Oh, I don't mind," says Dr. Ivar. "I only have these droids for company, most of the time. I'd love to have someone to talk out my theories to. That's what the droids are mainly for, anyway--to scout around where I can't be. It'd take me centuries to explore this whole city on my own. Would you like to see something?"

It's disconcerting how he directs the question to Paul as if Teemu isn’t even there, fingers brushing Paul’s arm as if by accident. Which is probably why Paul says "Of course," with embarrassing quickness.

*******

The view from the top of the building is no less eerie and no less impressive. "We've got to be quick," Dr. Ivar says. "You'll see why."

A few droids have trailed them up here--one on Paul's shoulder, another in Teemu's coat pocket--but they both hop to the ground, positioned just on the edge of the rooftop.

"This place is unnaturally empty," says Dr. Ivar, "have you noticed that? Even after thousands or millions of years, in an abandoned city, there's always some sign of people left. Household objects, technology, anything. Here there's only these stone towers. Almost."

The pair of droids throw up a tall cylindrical holographic display--like a screen encircling them and covering the view of the skyline, projecting a grid and a couple of rows of numbers scrolling past too quick to read. Then parts of the skyline start to light up--a dozen separate spots highlighted in gold.

"The droids found most of those," Dr. Ivar says. "Half of them way underground, you know, all of this extends almost as far down below ground as it does up above. The other half are directly above those, all at the highest points of the city."

"And all evenly spaced, right? That's how it looks." Teemu circles the perimeter of the hologram, examining them closely.

"What are they?" says Paul obligingly; he's pretty well accustomed to these kinds of conversations by now.

Dr. Ivar shrugs. "Just metal disks. Big, heavy iridium plates, embedded in the rock. They're engraved, but if any of it means something it looks like no language I've ever seen. They're the only things in this entire city not made of solid stone, and I don't know what the hell they are."

"We have equipment back in the TARDIS," says Teemu eagerly. "If there's anything you could use--"

"I'd just like to see one," Paul admits. "To start with."

"Later," says Dr. Ivar. "It wouldn't be safe right now--in fact, we'd better go inside. We'll still have a good view from my base camp."

They make it back down the stairs just in time for a tremendous crack of lightning outside. "Oh, _storms_ ," says Teemu, like they're his favorite thing in the world, and hurries to look out the nearest window.

"Record this," Dr. Ivar says to the nearest droid; they all scuttle to take positions at various windows. "Just being thorough," he adds to Paul, while Teemu appears entranced. "In fact, this happens exactly the same way every night, at the same time. Goes on for hours."

Paul finds a window of his own to look out through. There's no rain or wind, only the crackle of electricity arcing overhead, from-- "Wait. Aren't those all--"

"The locations of the metal disks," says Dr. Ivar, unexpectedly right at Paul's shoulder. Paul shifts over, just an inch or two, so that they can crowd into the window together to watch the show.

"This kind of enormous energy discharge," says Teemu thoughtfully. "Could it be what killed off the human colonist's crops?"

"You'd think they'd have noticed," says Paul. "It's supposed to be a big mystery, right? This isn't all that subtle."

Dr. Ivar shakes his head. "I don't think the colonists ever got this kind of a show. It's degrading the buildings, see where they're crumbling at the tops?” He leans in even closer, pressing along Paul’s side to point it out. “They wouldn't have lasted thousands of years like this."

Teemu nods. "So you think it's the same problem--and getting worse."

"I'll show you the nearest pair of disks in the morning," says Dr. Ivar, still warm against Paul’s ear. In contrast to Teemu, it seems like Ivar runs hotter than Paul; not uncomfortably so, but enough to be pleasant in contrast to the cold air outside. "Maybe you'll be able to make something of them."

*******

It turns out--understandably--that Dr. Ivar doesn't sleep nights, because no one could possibly sleep through the racket of the electrical storms. At sunrise he goes to sleep on his cot, most of the droids leave to go scout the next grid section of the city, and Teemu goes to fetch the TARDIS.

"Do you want help?" Paul offers; he feels awkward, here alone with one sleeping near-stranger.

"Oh, I'm fine," says Teemu quickly. "You wanted to go looking around here, right? Don't mind me, I'm just going out into the desert, and I'll start her up and land her in here. Seems easiest, right?"

"Yeah, if we need stuff we don't want to be going back and forth. I'm gonna go check out the nearest one of those disks." Paul looks him over. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. I get to meet my hero! Why wouldn't I be okay?” Teemu has to hesitate a second, though, before he can muster a smile; Paul doesn’t know what that’s about, or how to ask. “Take one of those little bots with you, so you don't get lost."

"Yeah, yeah, I can look after myself." Paul swats at him. "I'll see you soon."

*******

He likes the look of the place better by daylight; it's much warmer out, and it looks more welcoming, too, even if the sunlight is a noticeably different color than it would be on Earth. The droid leads him down the street, bouncing around at his feet for all the world like a puppy being taken on a walk; Paul's more convinced than ever that they've been programmed like this on purpose. He likes the company, though, just enough to be lifelike but undemanding. "We getting close?"

The droid chirps at him and hops towards the nearest building, a spire taller but much narrower than the one where they spent the night.

Given the choice of up or down, Paul elects to go up--if they're equidistant, than the lower disk must be under a whole lot of rock, and he'll take air and sunlight any day. That still means a lot of stairs--one tall spiral staircase, in fact, running right up the center of the tower--but it's looking like he'll have to get used to stairs for as long as he's here. Whoever built this place must have either been incredibly low-tech--in which case, how did they build it at all?--or just really loved climbing stairs, for some Godforsaken reason.

The view is worth it, he guesses, though it isn't much different from the view from any other tower. At least this time he knows to look for the damaged tops of buildings--if anything it's worse than he imagined. When he's looking for it, it's obvious that many of these towers are simply crumbling from the top down; strangely, though, he doesn't remember seeing any rubble in the street below.

Much more interesting and novel is the metal disk embedded in the ceiling at the very top of the tower. It's enormous, much bigger than Paul had imagined--easily further across than he is tall--and every square inch is etched with designs that seem to be ever smaller and more finely detailed the closer he looks.

“Well,” he says to the droid, lifting it up towards the ceiling. “What do you make of it?”

The droid unfolds a probe cautiously towards the disk; there's a spark, and the droid squeaks and withdraws.

"That bad, huh?" Paul pats it soothingly, and it skitters back up to what seems to be its preferred spot on his shoulder. He can't blame it; if he stands on his toes he can nearly reach the thing himself, but he keeps finding that he doesn't quite want to. His skin crawls every time his hand comes near it. "Is there anything inside?"

The droid obligingly projects a hologram, spinning slowly in midair. The disk, it turns out, isn't solid; it's structured inside, in a complicated pattern much like the one etched into the underside of it. It's glowing in places, a variety of colors that--at a guess--indicate that it's still emitting energy, even if it isn't last night's spectacular show.

Fine, so presumably none of this information would be new to Dr. Ivar, but it's new to Paul. He can work out the gist on his own.

Feeling contrary, Paul stretches a hand up again, and just manages to brush a finger against the metal. For a moment he can tell that it's warm, feels alive almost in a deeply unsettling way; then he flinches away, rocking back a step as he comes back down on his heels--and a bolt of energy shoots out inches in front of his face, straight down through the floor.

"Jesus," says Paul. "Did you catch that?" He glances down; the droid is fine, still clinging to his shoulder, but a patch of the floor in front of him looks dug up in a way solid rock shouldn't. He pokes his toe at it and it crumbles, leaving a fist-sized hole right through the floor.

Paul goes back down the stair to the street, pausing at each floor. The same hole is there, all the way down--but, like the crumbling buildings, none of the leftover pebbles and dust that should have resulted from punching a hole through stone. He even gamely follows it for a few more levels below street level, before it just gets too creepy and he needs to get back outside to fresh air.

When he gets back, he's greeted by Dr. Ivar, who's just emerging onto the street. "Morning," he says. "Been seeing the sights?"

Paul nods. "It's pretty creepy up there. Do you know what it's for?"

"Not sure, but it's clearly breaking down, isn't it?" Dr. Ivar glances skyward. "Must've been really magnificent, once upon a time. No matter what it was. Breakfast?"

"Sure." Paul accepts a protein bar, which seem to be a pretty constant form of mediocre nutrition everywhere in the universe, and they sit down on the ground to eat together. "Have you seen Teemu?"

Dr. Ivar nods. "He's back at home. So to speak. He's running my data through his ship to see if it can make anything more of it. That's an amazing ship you two've got there, you know?"

"I know," says Paul, and fidgets. "I mean, it's his, I'm just riding along for a bit. I was wondering--how long have you been living here?"

"A few months now," says Dr. Ivar.

"It's just--these disks, you think they're some kind of giant battery, right? And they're old and leaking. If they kill off crops, and even the droids don't like them--are you sure it's safe, living here?"

Ivar shrugs. "Not if I was here for years, maybe, but I'm not a plant."

"Well, you know, some people--they'll grind themselves into the ground to get a job done and insist they're fine the whole time."

Dr. Ivar laughs. "And by they you mean--"

Paul smiles back. “Who, me? Never.”

"I'll stick it out as long as I can and no longer, I promise." Dr. Ivar pats his knee. "But it's sweet of you to worry." He’s not taking his hand away.

"Oh," says Paul, can't remember offhand what he's supposed to do next, and just looks down at the ground while he finishes his protein bar. It seems safer to just leave that there in case he's misinterpreting the way Ivar's acting--which he probably is, anyway. "Do you know how these were even built?" he asks, instead. "Because it doesn't seem to be blocks of stone or anything, it's all just smooth. Like it was carved."

"That's a good question," says Ivar thoughtfully. “I wish I could answer it for you.”

Another droid comes running down the stairs; the one Paul brought along leaps away from him and goes to greet it, antennae bumping together. “That’s cute,” says Paul.

“Just synchronizing data,” says Ivar, head tilted. “It is, though, isn’t it?”

The second droid is followed by Teemu, in his shirt sleeves. He looks at them a little oddly, and Paul reflexively sits up straighter. “Funny thing,” he says. “It’s no wonder you couldn’t do anything with the data you’ve got. The TARDIS--”

There’s a terrible growling sound over their heads-not lightning this time, but stone. Paul scrambles away across the street, hauling Dr. Ivar away with him by the elbow. "What the hell," he says, staring upward.

He'd imagined from the noise that the tower must be crumbling, but that clearly isn't the right word for it. It's sagging downward--melting, really--groaning deafeningly in protest of a process that has no business happening to solid stone. It pauses for a second, like it’s settled again, and then the top starts to list sideways.

“My research,” Ivar gasps, and pulls away from Paul’s grip to run across the street and back into the building.

“Jesus,” says Paul, glances helplessly at Teemu, and runs after him. A herd of droids rattles past, fleeing down the stairs; the upper floors are collapsing altogether.

Paul hears the yell first; he rounds the next turn of the stairs and they just end. Ivar is half-dangling from the broken edge, groaning as he claws his way back up onto the stairs; Paul drops to his knees to help haul him onto solid ground. “You okay?”

Ivar grins ruefully and winces; one side of his face is scraped raw, trickling purplish blood. “I don’t think I’m going to see those books again,” he says, still leaning on Paul while they gasp their breath back.

“What did I just _tell_ you about looking after yourself?” Paul feels a pang of fond exasperation--weirdly familiar, thanks to plenty of experience with Teemu. He’s trying to ignore the rumble and crash around them. “You okay to get downstairs?”

Ivar shakes his head. “Sprained my ankle.”

“Okay,” says Paul, and gets an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s go, you can lean on me, come on--” but before they can wobble to their feet, the stairs begin to droop and slide sideways under them. “Shit.”

“Well,” says Ivar, as they scramble for handholds with one free hand each. “Do I know how to show a guy a good time, or--”

Paul laughs, startled; it turns into a yell as the stairs crumble and they plummet into nothing.

For a breathless moment he feels guilty, thinking of leaving Teemu alone again. It hits so hard that Paul could almost swear he hears the familiar rumble of the TARDIS materializing below them.

*******

"Like I was saying," Teemu says. "These things are putting off a ton of psychic energy. The TARDIS easily recognizes it, because she runs on it. Your instruments wouldn't--there's no reason they should."

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” says Paul. “And you, hold still, Jesus Christ, I’ve babysat toddlers and you are _both_ worse.”

Dr. Ivar clenches his jaw heroically. He’s sitting on the stairs in the TARDIS console room, a cold wrap on his ankle, while Paul cleans up the scrapes on his face. “Babysitting?”

“I have a niece,” says Paul vaguely. He’s sore in half a dozen places himself; they fell through the TARDIS doors and right down the stairs. “What were you saying, about psychic energy?”

Dr. Ivar looks over at Teemu. "Is it possible to to build a place like that? Just from sheer force of will."

Teemu nods and sits down on Paul’s usual spot on the edge of the console. "Anything could be possible--with enough force of will, like you say. People with that kind of power, sure, they could have pulled all of this up out of the ground and stored the energy to keep it standing."

Paul considers this, pushing Ivar’s hair back with one hand to tape a bandage methodically to his forehead. "So--these towers. The ones with the metal disks in them.They're batteries storing psychic energy, they're breaking down, and the city is breaking down with them. That pretty much sums it up, right?"

"And without the stored energy, the whole place is collapsing back down into the ground." Ivar sighs. "I really wanted more time there.”

Paul nudges his shoulder. "Hey, you figured out more than anyone else ever has."

"I just wish I knew who built all of it," says Dr. Ivar sadly. "They must've been tremendously powerful, whoever they were."

"If anyone can find it out, you can," says Teemu, bright-eyed all over again. "But I'm glad I could help you out a little.”

Paul can’t lie--It's been charming to see Teemu get flustered over meeting someone he admires, just like anyone else on the universe. That doesn’t stop him from mustering the nerve to squeeze Ivar’s knee before packing up his first aid kit. “At least we can give you a lift home.”

“You could stick around a bit when we get there,” says Ivar hopefully. “It wouldn’t be quite as exciting, true, but--”

Paul swallows, considers, and finds that he’s used up all the nerve he has. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s not that--I mean, it sounds like fun, but.” He has a lot of explanations, but none he actually wants to share.

Ivar just smiles at him, as warmly as ever despite the bandage on his face. “Hey, you can’t blame me for asking. It’d make the book better, too.”

He sits back in a comfortable sprawl on the stairs, propped on his elbows, and Paul has to admit to himself--it’s not that he doesn’t _want_. It’s just that he’s already sacrificed too much plausibile deniability in the past couple of days.

 

* * *

 

“There used to be a city like this,” says Paul. “On Earth. I had to write a report or something, back in high school.”

“Like this how?” Teemu asks, obligingly.

Paul leans back on his elbows to contemplate the view--and, briefly, how normal it feels to be eating a scenic picnic lunch on the outside wall of a derelict space station. “The city was growing so fast that no one could build houses to keep up, right--there were ships full of people arriving every day. So instead they built wharfs--wharves?--whatever, they built out to meet the ships, instead. People were living on them, running businesses out of them. So the city spread out into the sea the same as it was spreading on land, all these little pieces coming together. I guess I just always thought it sounded pretty cool. A floating city.”

“But you never went there?” Teemu shifts towards him, jerks suddenly in Paul’s peripheral vision, and curses.

Paul glances over. “Are you okay?”

“Spilled my coffee,” says Teemu, frowning down at his ruined shirt. “You were telling me about a floating city.”

“Yeah, I mean, it was like that a hundred years before I was born. I’ve been there, but it’s all solid ground and normal streets now, it’s not the same.”

“I could take you.” Teemu sounds oddly muffled, probably because he’s stripping his shirt off in Paul’s peripheral vision. It’s hideously undignified, and not distracting at _all._

“Nah,” says Paul, staring resolutely at the sky instead of at Teemu’s shoulders. “I’m good, thanks.”

There’s more rustling. Paul wonders whether Teemu even has a shirt to spare; they’ve been camping out here a few days.

Teemu called this thing a space station, but it isn’t exactly; it’s just a mass of wrecked ships, jammed together to form a single structure. Some kind of weird background radiation thing kills engines dead around here, stranding people, eventually forming this kind of accidental floating city.

Parts of the place are ancient now, abandoned, busted up and open to space all over the place, so naturally the thrillseeker thing to do is to go spelunking over and through it. It’s pretty damn cool, even though it gave Paul hideous vertigo when they first got here, and the TARDIS isn’t affected by the radiation whatever, so it’s not like they’re stranded.

“You really don’t want to go home,” Teemu says, after a minute. He sounds baffled, which is rich considering how fast he apparently ran from Gallifrey. “Do you? You talk about it, but you never seem to--miss it.”

“Eh,” says Paul.

He looks down after all, which is a tactical error, because Teemu is still shirtless, lying back on the picnic blanket next to him with his arms folded behind his head. He’s not even _doing_ anything and it’s still a way more distracting view than the one above them.

Maybe that’s why Paul makes the worse mistake of opening his mouth again. “I don’t know how it is on other planets, but there was always--there’s this idea, on Earth, that when we meet aliens it’ll change everything, we’ll stop beating up on each other and be better people or something.”

“It’s a nice thought,” says Teemu, carefully neutral.

“Well, you know, when the Martians invaded in what, 1997? I was so busy with work I didn’t even notice.” Which is a hideous understatement for a hideous week spent being steamrolled by the Russian Five, over and over. “And when it was over and I finally saw a paper, everyone was saying it was a hoax, so--” Paul shrugs. “But then it was giant bugs and Cybermen and, I don’t know, some giant floating eyeball thing, and things--shit I’ve been dealing with all my life, it’s not going to change. If the Cybermen can’t scare us into being better, I don’t think anything can.”

He’d thought for all of a minute, years ago: _maybe this is when things get better;_ it had sounded fucking delusional, even in his own head, even then. Paul never realized, until just now, how exhausted he is from carrying that shred of fruitless hope.

“I’m sorry,” says Teemu. “I think--I do think people get better. Even if they aren’t yet. I think you’ll get there.”

“You would think that,” says Paul, not especially bitterly, because Teemu doesn’t know. He had shit of his own to get away from at home, stuff Paul doesn’t really grasp, so it’s only fair that Teemu doesn’t really get what Paul’s hiding from here, either.

Teemu thinks the best of everyone, even when he should know better; Teemu is lying here next to him, bare-chested in his ridiculous tight pants and boots. Worst of all, Teemu is looking back at Paul all expectantly, like he wants nothing more than to know is where this train of thought is heading. Paul doesn’t know what he did wrong to deserve this, but he really, really needs it to stop.

It’s been weeks since they parted with Dr. Ivar, but Paul keeps catching himself wishing he’d been more direct with him, let something happen there. It would’ve been fun, and it would’ve gotten this crap out of his system for a minute. Teemu is too important for Paul to be thinking about like this.

“I,” says Paul, more a strangled noise than a word, and puts his hands over his face. “Fuck.” Things were supposed to _get better_ ; he was supposed to stop being scared. It seems like such a small thing to ask in exchange for repeated Dalek invasions.

“Paul?” says Teemu.

“I had a boyfriend,” Paul says into his palms. “In high school.”

“Okay,” says Teemu. He still sounds confused. “And then?”

Because, right, Teemu _doesn’t get it,_ because he’s not from Earth _._ Paul’s just handed him something immense, and Teemu genuinely has no clue. And, unexpectedly, that hurts.

Paul desperately _wants_ Teemu to get it, he realizes, but he doesn’t have the words or the energy to explain. “Never mind,” he says instead. “We were kids, you know, it was ages ago, it didn’t stick. I don’t know why it popped into my head.”

The important thing, he tells himself, is that he got the words out. No one’s ever known besides Paul and his ex. That counts for something, he’s pretty sure, whether or not Teemu sees it.

Teemu’s still staring at him, clearly bewildered, so Paul shrugs and sits up. “Let me know when your shirt’s dry,” he says. “We should get moving again soon.”

 

* * *

 

"The air's fresh," says Teemu optimistically. "Don't judge the place so quick."

Paul gives the TARDIS door one last experimental shove. She's reverted to a blank white cube, which feels somehow like a show of immense passive aggression, and they're still firmly locked out. "At least the scenery's nice."

The scenery isn't nice; in fact, scenery is a generous word for someplace powerfully reminiscent of the bowels of the Nostromo. The metal hallway they've landed in is worn and creaking, the lights are flickering, and something is dripping ominously out of sight somewhere.

The TARDIS has been weird lately, and it may not unsettle Teemu but it certainly unsettles Paul. She’s been shuffling her insides around more than usual, locking doors to rooms they need to get into, and Paul keeps hearing unusual mechanical noises in the walls. He’d heard one today that sounded particularly, unsettlingly, like something living scuttling around; they’d been trying to track it down when the TARDIS had redirected them into the console room and dumped them out the door into--wherever this is.

"Well," says Teemu, "since we're here, we might as well go exploring, hm?"

"If we find any giant eggs, I'm out of here," Paul warns him, but Teemu's already left the room, which in hindsight spares Paul some complicated explanations. "Teemu? Hey, where--"

"In here," Teemu calls, through the nearest door. "This is interesting, I think. I'm not sure what it is, but it's interesting."

Paul peers cautiously through the door; Teemu's poking around an abandoned laboratory. The metal floor creaks ominously under his feet. "This stuff is all new," he says, "but no one's been using it. Where'd they go?"

"Someplace brighter?" Paul suggests. "Imagine having to work in here all day."

Teemu laughs, circling a large coffin-like alcove set apart at the back of the room. It's closed off with a pair of smooth metal doors, brighter and newer than the walls elsewhere. "I wonder," he says, and pokes a finger at it.

The doors, seemingly solid metal, disintegrates under his hand. Teemu jumps back in surprise; Paul, who is more and more convinced he's the only person in this room who's ever watched a movie in his life, braces himself to grab Teemu and make a run for it if they have to.

"Empty," says Teemu, disappointed, and indeed it is, apart from the initial cloud of dust that's already settling to the floor.

"Shouldn't we be figuring out what's wrong with the TARDIS?"

"Oh, there's nothing wrong with her," Teemu says, distracted by trying to see through the hole in the door. "She's just in a snit over something, she'll get over it."

"Ah," says Paul. "TARDISes can have snits?"

Teemu waves a hand vaguely. "Well, you know, she's very young, it happens to everyone. Even TARDISes."

"Tell you what," says Paul, because movies or no his skin is honestly starting to crawl. "How about I go looking for people around here, if there are any? It could take her a while to let us back in. We might need food, or something."

"That's," Teemu begins, makes an odd choking noise, and stumbles against a table.

"That's what?" says Paul, "Teemu--" and has to scramble forward to support him as he sags towards the floor. He manages to sit down carefully, supporting Teemu, who's slumped heavily against his side. "What did you do?"

"It was _empty_ ," says Teemu; through the strain he sounds indignant, as though whatever’s happening is a personal affront to him. "I don't know. Oh, Paul, my head." He's gone extremely pale, obvious even in the shaky light, and his shoulders might be trembling under Paul's arm.

"We'll get you back in the TARDIS," Paul says, rubbing Teemu's arm. He's honestly never imagined that Teemu could get sick, but that's his own mistake. "I'm sure she'll let you--"

There's a clatter of half a dozen boots running into the room, and a blinding flare of light directly in Paul's face. "What are you doing here?" a voice demands, eerily disembodied behind the blinding light.

Teemu lets out a really alarming groan and turns his face into Paul’s side. He usually runs cooler than Paul, but through his shirt his arm feels almost ice-cold.

“Nothing,” says Paul reflexively. Somehow, fifteen years of Michiko’s media coaching never addressed this kind of thing. “I mean, we landed here by accident, it wasn’t--”

There are three shadows, it looks like, behind the searchlights, blobby and vague; they could be human-like people in hazmat suits, or they could just be shaped like that. “You’re in an abandoned zone, two miles below ground on an uninhabited planet,” one says, derisive even through what sounds like a speaker. Mask, then, probably. “You landed by accident, did you? What are you doing here?”

“Enjoying the scenery,” Paul says shortly. Teemu is unmistakably shivering, breath shallow, and that’s the first and last thing Paul cares about right now. “What do _you_ want?”

One of the lights slides down to point at Teemu. “Get away from him, for a start.”

Paul is shaking his head before he can even think about it. “You leave him alone.”

“Paul--” Teemu says, muffled, but his voice is too tight with pain for the warning to have any teeth. His shoulder jerks under Paul’s hand.

Paul draws himself in like he’s lining up at the hash marks, like he’s bracing for impact; he doesn’t stand just yet, because he’ll have to let go of Teemu then, but he looks up and meets his best guess at where somebody’s eyes are. “Just leave him alone, and I’ll tell you everything I can. Not that that’s much.”

Teemu groans again, but it sounds almost more exasperated than pained.

“Very sweet,” says the voice in exasperation. “How long has he been like this?”

“A few minutes,” says Paul, and swallows his pride. “Do you know what’s happening to him?”

“Did you touch it?”

He doesn’t waste time asking what they mean. “No.”

“He’ll be contagious within an hour at most,” another figure says. “You both need to be contained.”

“Can you _help him_?”

“Better just come with us.” The third figure is carrying the unmistakable silhouette of a gun, so Paul figures that’s the most answer he’s going to get.

*******

They're taken down the hallway--Paul frog-marched, Teemu all but carried, through an airlock that shuts solidly behind them with two heavy _clangs_. The area behind is abruptly much more pleasant: no rust, no mysterious dripping, and much better lit. Paul's not particularly soothed, though, because despite his protests he's separated from Teemu almost immediately. (Teemu is almost unconscious, and shows no interest in protesting anything.)

The people in the suits--he can see now at least that they're humans or similar, in there--shove him into a laboratory and draw blood without bothering to ask permission first. Paul's left alone for a few minutes, presumably to contemplate his sins or something, until a woman comes back in without the hazmat suit. "I'm sorry," she says, straight off. "I hope you understand, we couldn't waste any time. Congratulations, though, you haven't been exposed."

Paul stares stonily at her from the chair where they left him. "Where's my friend?"

"Quarantine," she says. "He seems stable for now, but we aren't familiar with his species. I can only speak to how the toxin progresses in humans."

"Can you help him?"

"I'm sorry," she says again, "but no."

Paul swallows. "Okay," he says. "Who the hell are you and what's happening to him?"

"This is my base," she says. "I think you'd better explain first, don't you?"

Paul dutifully provides her with his name and species, and Teemu's name, and a brief explanation of how they got here; she clearly doesn't believe this last item, but leaves it alone.

"All right, Mr. Kariya," she says, finally. "I don't know if I believe you, but God knows I can't imagine why anyone would come down here on purpose, so I'm going to trust that you're harmless. I'm Dr. Galveston--no, not a medical doctor, I'm sorry. A geochemist."

"Nice to meet you." Paul props his arms on the table. "Just what's going on?"

Dr. Galveston waves a hand around her. "We were sent here to scout it out for fuel mining operations, a team of twelve. The lab you found leads to a tunnel directly outward into solid rock, for sampling purposes. Instead we hit a vein of something toxic. We'd never seen it before, still don't know much about it. But it's absorbed by touch, and after an hour or so it works its way through a person's body and can be transmitted through their skin."

Paul takes a deep breath. "And then?"

"So far, just like you've seen. Chills, fever, aches, kind of like the flu. Except that the flu won't kill you inside twelve hours."

"Oh, God." Paul scrubs at his face. He thinks he might throw up.

"I'm sorry," Galveston says again. "We lost most of our team before we realized they were spreading it to each other. The company liaison didn't want to seal the place off, but finally he got sick too." She shrugs tiredly. "We’ve just been sitting around waiting for a ride home. At least until you breached the lab and the alarms went off over here."

"And there's nothing you can do about it?"

She shakes her head. "There's a medic trying to make him comfortable, but that's it."

"I don't know, I--" Paul takes a deep breath; he doesn't want to let on to this near-stranger how small and lost he suddenly feels. "Can I talk to him?"

*******

Teemu is awake at least, which is honestly better than Paul had hoped for. The little quarantine room has been converted from a storage room--a bed inside, a sealed glass wall with an airlock set into it, some monitors and an intercom, but not much else. This is clearly not a facility ever meant to serve as a hospital.

"Hey," says Paul, and pulls a stool up to sit outside the glass. "Having a good time in there?"

Teemu is sitting on the end of his bed, leaning up against the glass from the other side. He manages a smile for Paul, though; somehow, he always manages that. "Would you believe," he says hoarsely. "This was supposed to be a fun trip? I was trying to cheer you up."

"That's okay." says Paul. It’s really not.

“Do you know what happened to my clothes?” Teemu fidgets with the plain scrubs he’s wearing.

“I think they vaporized them. For safety, you know.”

“Too bad,” Teemu says. “Another coat gone.”

Paul musters an answering smile for him, far too late to be convincing. "How are you feeling?"

"Like jelly." Teemu holds up his hand and gives it a shake, as if to demonstrate. "It’s weird, Paul, I can feel it eating through me, but I can’t do anything about it. Most poisons, I could--But they gave me something for the pain," he adds in hasty response to whatever’s happening on Paul’s face. “It’s just strange.”

"Good," says Paul. "That's--that's good, that it doesn’t hurt, I mean," and doesn't know what should come after that. He sits there a minute in silence; he should go back to the others, try and figure something out, anything. But he’s afraid that if he leaves Teemu alone, that’ll--well, that’ll be it.

“Paul,” says Teemu suddenly. “Paul, listen, I forgot you don’t know. If I die--”

“You’re not _going to_ ,” says Paul, with ill-hidden desperation. There's something horrible and painful trying to claw its way up his throat.

“ _Listen_ ,” says Teemu again, sharper. “If I die, I don’t stay dead. You have to get me out of here if it happens.”

Paul stares. He wonders if maybe Teemu’s delirious. “What do you mean, you don’t stay dead?”

“If I die--” Teemu swallows. “My bond with the TARDIS will restore me, but I’ll be--different. I won’t look like me, but I’ll still be me.”

“Teemu,” says Paul, as patiently as he can, “that’s not clearing anything up.”

“Well, I’ve never died before, I don’t know what it’s like,” Teemu says, like it’s Paul who’s being unreasonable here. “All I’m saying, if it happens--get me out of here right away, don’t let them destroy my body like they destroyed my clothes.”

“Okay,” says Paul, because what else is he going to say? “But different how?”

Teemu laughs, strained and desperate. “A whole new body, Paul, I don’t _know._ ”

They’ve waded through a lot of bullshit since they’ve known each other, but Teemu’s always been the one to reach out first for comfort, no matter which of them needs it. Paul hadn’t realized how much he’s used to that--but he’s craving contact now, and he can’t offer it. He has to settle for rapping his knuckles against the glass between them. “I’ll take care of it. Whatever you need.”

Teemu taps on the glass in response and smiles; for a moment he doesn’t look quite so worn and pale. “I know.”

*******

“There’s got to be something,” Paul says. He’s dragged himself away, largely because Teemu’s asleep. Only asleep, for now. “This poison killed most of your people--even if there wasn’t time to solve it, I don’t believe you didn’t _try._ ”

“Of course we tried,” says the man in the corner of the mess, who hasn’t yet bothered to introduce himself. “It’s not that we don’t _know_ what to do for your friend. It’s that we _can’t._ ”

“Okay, but if you _could_ do it, what would it be? Mr.--”

“Brewer,” the man says. "And would you believe there's life in this hellscape? Native life."

"Sentient?" says Paul, startled.

Brewer laughs at that. "Christ, no, nothing fancy like that. But there's lower life, stuff you could call fungi or plants. If you were generous. There's a whole underground lake not too far outside this base. It'd be a xenobiologist's wet dream if--well, if we still had a xenobiologist."

"I'm sorry," says Paul. His mind is half back in that quarantine room with Teemu; it takes him a minute to realize what Brewer is getting at. "So the plants and so on--they evolved out there, where it's toxic to humans. They're resistant to it."

"Bingo." Brewer nods. "Galveston survived that poison, did you know that? She’s the only one."

Paul stares at him. “She didn’t mention that.”

“Maybe she thought it was kinder,” says Brewer. “Not telling you there’s a cure we can’t get at.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Back when everyone was getting sick, Jenkins thought of those plants right away, realized she could cook up a cure from them. But the poison worked so quick, by the time there was a cure Galveston was the only one left to cure. And now it’s been months--nothing left to work with. I’m sorry.”

Resigning himself to the needs of the flesh, Paul goes to figure out the coffee machine in the corner. He doesn't know what century he’s in, but as long as there's still coffee, surely there's still hope. "Then why not go out and get more?"

"The place has tides," says Brewer. "Kind of. The surface has flood seasons and dry seasons, and in the wet times the water runs down and the lake swells up. Months ago, when everyone started getting sick--that was easy, I could wade across and get what we needed no problem. But now--there's barely any air in there at high tide. No way for anyone to get through to the other side and take samples, and we don't have the gear for a long swim. Not something you'd expect to need."

“How long a swim?”

Brewer shrugs. “Over a mile.”

Paul pauses between sips of coffee. “That’s all?”

Brewer eyes him. “Look, I‘m sorry about your friend but--”

“I do that most mornings,” says Paul, and attempts a confident smile. It doesn’t feel like it comes out quite right.

*******

He has to go back to the TARDIS and get the wetsuit-like outfit he went surfing in; she’s still blank and unresponsive. “Please,” says Paul, through the bulky quarantine suit, “I don’t know what your problem is but he is _leaving us_ , please.”

The TARDIS shivers and opens for half a second, enough to cough the suit out onto the floor at his feet. He’ll take it.

*******

"I'm going to go into a coma soon," Teemu says, disturbingly matter-of-fact about it.

"I thought--" Paul swallows. "Dr. Galveston didn't mention that was a symptom." He’s changing outside Teemu’s quarantine room, because he wanted to check in once more without it wasting any extra time.

His modesty is safe because Teemu can’t see him; he’s huddled under a blanket, shivering too violently to lift his head and actually look at Paul. "It's not. But if I do it on purpose it'll slow my metabolism way down. Buy you some time.”

"That's a hell of a talent,” says Paul mechanically.

“Paul, please don’t think--” Teemu shifts restlessly on the mattress. “I might have come here anyway, even if you weren’t with me. I’d still be here, like this, with no one who could do what you’re doing.”

“Maybe,” says Paul. Some misguided instinct is screaming at him to go _in_ there, crawl under that blanket, and hold on to Teemu as tight as he can--so that Teemu won’t be so cold, won’t be alone in there. So that Teemu can’t _go_ anywhere.

His fingers are flexing absently, craving contact; Paul digs his nails into his palms and tries to swallow the urge down, but that only makes him queasy.

“I just want you to know,” Teemu says. “Whatever happens, I’m not sorry you’re here with me.”

“Stop that,” says Paul. It hadn’t occurred to him to feel guilty. Terrified is a better word; it feels like Teemu is diappearing an inch at a time. He’s shutting the fear away, trying to channel it forward; if there’s one thing he’s good for, it’s that.

This time when he brushes his fingers against the glass, Teemu can’t see it or reach to respond. “I’ll see you soon,” says Paul, and tries to sound sure of it.

*******

After a lifetime spent living around open water, the underground lake is new to Paul. New and profoundly creepy. With no wind and no life it's utterly still down here, which makes for easier swimming, but he almost wishes for a wave or two just to make the whole place feel less suffocating.

In the stillness, and with the low ceiling, it's difficult to judge distance. Paul loses track of time for a while; it's more soothing than anything, to lose himself in the rhythm of movement. But he can't lose the mental image of Teemu, lying back there cold and still, with utter faith that Paul can find a way to save him. Periodically he has to pause and tread water, catching his breath, trying to judge the distance to the far shore.

It never seems to be getting any closer, and he's really starting to wonder if he's going to be in this lake forever--until all of a sudden there's solid rock under his feet and he's across. There are more caves leading away from the lake shore, but Paul's not interested in those--only in the thick matted patches of green along the water's edge.

He gathers as much as he can. It seems to take an age, and he's not usually a claustrophobic person, but he can't shake the feeling that the low heavy ceiling is about to come down on him any second--it's something about the oppressive stillness and silence. Paul hums to himself, but the humid air smothers the sound, and he doesn't feel any better for it.

He's never been so relieved in his life as he is to finally fill the sample bag Jenkins gave him, slide into the water, and start back.

*******

"How is he?" he asks, the moment he gets back and hands Jenkins the bag. He’s been gone an hour and a half, all told; it feels like a year.

She looks grim. "Completely unconscious. I really thought he had no vitals, last time I checked."

"He told me he could put himself into a coma. To slow down or stop the poison, I guess." Paul peers anxiously over her shoulder as she examines the samples.

"God, I hope so," says Jenkins. "His body temperature's dropped below freezing, his heart's beating five times a minute, it's sure nothing I've ever seen with the humans we had poisoned here. You say he's doing it on purpose--well, I hope you're right."

"Okay," Paul says. Then again, he's not sure what could reassure him at this juncture, besides seeing Teemu awake and well again.

He hovers stubbornly for a minute, until Galveston and Brewer haul him away so Jenkins can focus. “Go clean up,” says Brewer, tactfully. “No one can think with that God-awful lake smell.”

*******

Paul goes to the crew quarters, showers, puts on a spare jumpsuit, tries with all his might not to think about anything. He’s used to paddling a surfboard half a mile at a time, often several times in a morning--but two and a half miles at speed is still a lot of work, and with the adrenaline draining away he’s starting to really feel it. He sits down on an unused bunk and leans against the soothing cool metal of the wall. Just to get the weight off his feet for a minute.

When he wakes up, he’s still alone, with no idea how long it’s been. Paul sits up, stretches--and then he remembers and bolts for the hallway, where he almost immediately runs headlong into somebody.

It’s Teemu--looking pale and tired, but very much alive and hearty. "Paul!" he says, as delighted as though it were Paul who'd narrowly escaped a painful mysterious death, and reaches for him. "They said I could find you in here."

Paul stares--and doesn't _exactly_ hurl himself at him, but it's a close thing.

Teemu laughs and hugs Paul hard enough to nearly lift him off the ground, near-death experience or not.

“Teemu,” says Paul, face pressed into his shoulder. “Teemu, oh my god.” Teemu still feels cold--colder than usual, that is--but his hearts are thumping steadily against Paul’s chest, the best thing Paul’s ever felt. “It’s so good to see you.”

Teemu rubs his back. "Well, they let me out of there, where else was I going to go first? Look at you, the hero of the hour."

“Please, no.” Paul realizes he's actually clenched his fingers in the back of Teemu's shirt; he relaxes them one at a time, in hopes Teemu maybe won't notice.

Teemu takes him firmly by both shoulders and steps back to look at him. "You saved my life. And the people working here, maybe. Imagine if one of them had gotten sick."

Paul looks him over; Teemu looks drawn and tired, still, but still a hundred miles beyond 'self-induced coma.' "About the TARDIS," he says hastily. "How is she?"

"She's stopped sulking, is that what you mean? But I wanted to see you before I went back inside." Teemu tugs at his shoulder, drawing him out of the room and down the hallway. "We can go see just what was wrong to begin with."

Paul leans into him, temporarily shameless; right now, he’s fine with whatever gets them out of here.

*******

Nothing looks out of place when they go back into the TARDIS, or even while they go to change into their own clothes. Paul returns to the console room to find that they're already in transit, and Teemu's out of sight behind the console murmuring to something--which, in itself, isn't unusual; he talks to the controls all the time. But it's usually a little more concrete than "Look at you, look, what a sweet little thing, how'd you get here?"

Paul's first thought, rounding the console, is that Teemu looks almost back to his old self already, bright and cheerful. His second is utter bewilderment. "Wait, is that--"

The little droid chirps at him, like it knows it's being talked about, and scurries from Teemu's lap up to his shoulder. "One of your little friends," says Teemu. "It must've stowed away a few weeks ago."

Paul sits down on the edge of the console; the droid hops neatly from Teemu's shoulder onto his, and he tries not to startle. "Is this what has the TARDIS so upset?"

"Sort of." Teemu pats the floor--and the machinery below it, by extension--and pushes to his feet. He wobbles a bit, and they both politely ignore it. "I told you, she's very young. We were so shaken up realizing something else was living in here, I think she thought _we'd_ mind."

"She was protecting it?" Paul rubs at the droid's head, or what passes for it, and it presses up into his hand. For a robot, it sure does seem to love being pet. "So she kicked _us_ out."

"Over a century I've been bonded to her," Teemu says sadly, but he leans in close to keep an eye on the droid. "So much for loyalty."

 

* * *

 

Paul goes running every morning, through a couple of miles of corridors; he tries to keep his route the same, to whatever extent that’s possible inside the TARDIS. It looks at least a little different every day, but it’s nice to have this one remnant of a routine first thing before the inevitable chaos sets in. Teemu--whose concept of personal space is otherwise minimal--tends to stay out of the way until Paul is finished and washed up and seeks him out.

So there’s no one handy to explain why, one morning, his run takes him past a full-sized swimming pool he’s _almost_ sure was never there before. He wonders briefly whether the TARDIS knew somehow he might want one, and then decides he’s better off not knowing. Privacy may be an illusion around here, but it’s one Paul would rather preserve if at all possible.

Also, he just really wants a swim--for its own sake, this time, in a nice clean bright pool, with nobody’s life on the line.

He’s still curious enough to make directly for the console room afterwards, arriving just as Teemu is turning the last page of Paul’s notes into some kind of complicated origami creature. It has more teeth than should really be possible from folding a single sheet of paper. “That was important,” says Paul in resignation; he knows from experience he won’t be able to bring himself to unfold it again. Which is why he keeps spare copies of everything.

“Pfff,” says Teemu, setting it carefully in line with the others surrounding the control column. “I know how to fly my own TARDIS.”

“Okay, but I don’t, so I need those.” Paul swipes his towel over his face. “And you always forget to tune the transduction actuators before we take off.”

“I do not.” Teemu turns around and looks him over. “What happened to you? Did you fall into something?”

Paul glances down at himself blankly. “I went swimming. In the swimming pool we apparently have now. Was that there before?”

“Maybe? I don’t know, haven’t seen it in a long time.” Teemu looks away, fidgeting with an adjustable magnifying glass on the console behind him. “Oh! It’s your turn to choose, right?”

“Yeah, um.” Paul has run out of suggestions again, but he refuses to give up his hard-won right to decide where they’re going.

Well, that’s not true. He’s been sitting on an idea since the start; it seemed silly then, it seems silly now, but it keeps itching at him.

“You’ll be bored,” he says warily.

“I’m never bored.” Which is a terrible lie, because Teemu looks kind of glazed already.

Paul sighs. “Earth. 1967.”

“I thought you didn’t want to go back to Earth.” Teemu turns around to attack the controls, waving Paul off when he moves to help. “Don’t, you’ll drip on something. What happened in 1967?”

Paul claims a chair instead, even though he’s starting to really want a shower and fresh clothes. “The Canadian--uh, my country’s rugby team lost to another country’s. Badly.”

“That’s it? You want to watch your own country lose a game.”

“That’s it,” Paul confirms. He really can’t blame Teemu for being suspicious. He’ll see anyway, when they get there--which is handy, because it saves Paul having to explain.

*******

The weather is miserable, but it’s the comfortingly familiar misery that happens every year when Vancouver is gearing up to piss down rain all winter. When they land in the parking lot it’s grey and only vaguely drizzling, but they’ve obviously just missed some more serious rain. The newly laid turf at Thunderbird is maybe one step up from a mud pit, the stands smell of wet sawdust and fresh paint, and loose electrical cables have been crammed out of the way where they obviously don’t belong.

Paul finds himself and Teemu a pair of seats a few rows back, where they’ll be sheltered if the rain starts again and their faces won’t be too immediately visible from the field--there’s no reason they should be recognizable, but he probably can’t be too careful.

He’s had a while to think about this by now; he doesn’t think it’s something he could have done even a few years ago. Even so, he sits there in a kind of preemptive shock, which Teemu won’t stop trying to pester him out of until the players squelch out onto the field and even Teemu shuts up for a moment. “Is that--”

Paul nods, stricken.

Teemu’s fingers curl around Paul’s wrist, which should be intolerable for several reasons--not the least of which is that they’re in public in 1967. But it jolts Paul back to life, makes him feel warm again; Teemu’s thumb strokes the back of his hand, and just this once Paul lets himself enjoy it.

“I’m okay,” he says, even though Teemu didn’t ask.

For the first time since Paul left home, he’s genuinely afraid he might be dreaming. But Teemu’s firm grip on his wrist is perfectly real, and so is Paul’s dad, alive and strong and frighteningly young on the field below them.

*******

Paul doesn’t feel much like going anywhere for a little while after that, so Teemu goes out alone the next time they land. “Tropical paradise!” he says hopefully on his way out the door. “Beaches, jungles--”

“--probably dinosaurs,” Paul counters, half educated guess and half spite. He pointedly turns a page in his book. It isn’t that he’s picked up Teemu’s deeply questionable taste in alien romance novels; they’re just weirdly soothing. Unlike Teemu’s swimsuit, which is--well, pretty tiny. It’s causing some problems in Paul’s life, and he has enough of those already, so he’s just not going to look up until Teemu leaves.

He gets a few hours of peace this way, reading books he doesn’t retain a word of while the TARDIS lets reddish sunlight filter through the ceiling of the console room. The droid wanders in and chirps interrogatively--”no,” says Paul, “nothing is happening, I don’t need anything, shh,” and it folds up its legs and drops down on the floor, dormant and humming faintly.

Maybe they should give the thing a name. He’ll ask Teemu later.

He’s dozing off a little himself, thinking vaguely that the console room could use a couple of houseplants, when Teemu stumbles back in through the door. “Shit,” says Paul, sitting up straight. “Are you okay?”

“You missed all the fun!” Teemu beams at him, undimmed even with an unmistakeable black eye. There’s even less of his swimsuit than there was when he left, which _really_ shouldn’t be Paul’s biggest concern right now, but all the same it’s a relief that Teemu limps directly down the hallway and comes back a few minutes later with a fresh shirt and pants on. Paul budges over on the sofa and lifts an arm; Teemu tucks himself under it immediately, kicking his feet up and slumping against Paul’s side.

Paul isn’t entirely sure whether he’s been touching Teemu more lately, or the other way around, or if it just seems that way because it’s been stressing him out less. It’s nice, whatever it is, and he’ll take it.

“So,” he says after a minute. “Was it dinosaurs?”

“Dinosaurs are specific to _Earth_.” Teemu sounds a little sulky, which means _yes_. “None of you can even agree what they are.” His black eye is already tinged with green; the mess of cuts and bruises on his shoulder and arm seems to have shrunk since he came back. He’ll be good as new by tomorrow morning.

Paul’s spent his whole life around guys laughing off injuries, minor or otherwise. Hell, he’s spent a lot of time being that guy. There’s no reason he should be feeling knotted up just because Teemu has a few scratches and a twisted ankle--except, maybe, that the memory of Teemu sick in quarantine is still just a little too fresh.

Anyway, it’s fine and there’s nothing to be done, so Paul shrugs and goes back to his book. “Told you to bring a first aid kit,” he says, and messes up Teemu’s hair for the hell of it.

 

* * *

 

The outer door is opening. It doesn’t make a lot of noise, just a hum, but Paul’s listening pretty carefully. And it’s not his hearing that’s fucked--not today, anyway. “Any progress?”

“Shh,” says Teemu, behind him.

“Three layers of security,” the bank manager is saying, “and that’s in addition to the unmatched security in place around the entire moon. All our systems are powered by solar energy, beamed remotely from a separate station. Can’t be cut off or shut down at the source.”

The middle door opens, with a louder whirr this time. Paul wonders if they’re deliberately built to be progressively louder, for maximum dramatic effect. “Um. Teemu?”

“--three-way identity verification, the entire vault constructed from one hundred percent sonic-impermeable materials, artificially intelligent incursion predictor, full spectrum automated scanning from three femtometers to--”

“You’re always so impatient,” Teemu says sadly. “Hold onto your pants, I’m almost finished.”

“--genetic scanning, molecular-level motion detectors, self-immolating locking mechanisms--”

“ _Teemu_ ,” Paul hisses. “I really think we should--”

“In sixteen hundred years of business,” the man declares, “not once has even the outermost vault been compromised without our knowledge.”

There’s a dramatic grinding of gears; the inner door clangs open.

Paul shuffles sideways, a futile attempt to hide--well, the entire vault, the TARDIS parked in the corner, Teemu rummaging through an open safety deposit box. “Um. Hi?”

*******

“Technically,” he says hopefully, later, “we didn’t breach anything.”

“Well, then, you must not have been in the vault after all.” The head of security ponders him, thin-lipped; her heavy tail swishes back and forth across the floor. “Just because you _teleported_ in through the walls--”

“No, no, no.” Teemu’s shaking his head--they’re tied up back-to-back, but Paul can feel the movement against the back of his own head. “We didn’t go through at all! We just weren’t there--and then we were. Like that.”

“We’d be very happy to not be here any more,” Paul suggests. “Save all of us some trouble.”

The head of security bends down to stare into his face. Her eyes are glaringly yellow even through Paul’s sunglasses. “Why is your face covered?”

“He says I look cooler like this,” says Paul, with a deadpan delivery he’s frankly proud of.

“He does, though!” Teemu says brightly. “It’s a good look on him, don’t you think? Very handsome.”

Paul rolls his eyes, while neither of them can see him do it. Then the glasses are yanked off his face and he yelps as much from surprise as from pain, squinting and ducking his head against the harsh light overhead.

Teemu’s finger hooks around one of his; their bound hands are pinned together between their chair backs, where no one else can see. Paul doesn’t have any excuse to hold on and squeeze back, but he does it anyway.

“Hmmmmm.” Up close, there’s noticeably a nasty rattle in the back of her voice when she speaks. “Don’t see very well, do you?”

“Not today.” He doesn’t feel a need to elaborate beyond that.

“So. Strangers in the vault without authorization, but you didn’t break in and you didn’t want to take anything out. You think I believe this?”

“I wanted to see if I could,” says Teemu, like this should be obvious. Maybe that’s why he didn’t bother explaining to Paul beforehand. “You talk so much about it, the most secure bank in the universe, what do you think people will do?” He lets go of Paul’s hand, shifting his arms to let the thick cuff of his coat brush Paul’s fingers instead.

Paul fishes around inside the cuff as subtly as he can, trying to mask the movement by fidgeting in his chair, and--yes, of course Teemu is carrying a small knife folded up in his coat cuff, why is this even a surprise. He works it out of there, slowly, and drops it into Teemu’s waiting palm. “We did you a favor, really,” he adds, a beat behind. “If we could get in there, imagine if somebody actually _tried._ ”

The guard moves around to confront Teemu again, which mercifully gives Paul the chance to close his eyes while he works at his ties with the knife. He can't tell whether the lights are deliberately too bright, or it's just that he's oversensitive today. "So tell me," she hisses. "If you're so innocent and well-meaning, just how _did_ you get into that vault?"

Teemu laughs, although it might be because Paul's just gotten his own hands loose, and is working on Teemu's now. "You want to know how the TARDIS works? That could take a while."

There's an unexpected, ominous silence. Paul opens his eyes and cranes his neck around, just in time to see the guard lean forward in a steep sinuous curve no human spine could ever achieve. The fronds around her face have turned a pale chilly green. "A TARDIS, did you say?"

Teemu shrugs. "That's what she is, isn't she?"

The guard leans closer still, too close for Paul to see what she's doing. "What are you?"

"Gallifreyan," Teemu says, after a pause. Between their backs, the cut ropes drop to the floor, and Paul can feel him flexing his fingers restlessly.

"Time Lord," the guard corrects him. "Right? TARDIS means Time Lord."

"Does it matter?" Paul asks, hoping to relieve some of the tension he can feel building in Teemu's back. "We haven't done anything wrong. Isn't that the important thing?"

"Not now," the guard says, and straightens up with the same disconcertingly fluid movement. "You're a Time Lord, you come with me. What about you?"

"Me?" says Paul, momentarily lost.

"He stays with me." Teemu pauses to reconsider this. "Or, you know. Which option doesn't get him hurt?"

Paul flicks his wrist with a finger. "Thanks, that's really convincing."

"Neither of you will be hurt," says the guard. "The Chancellor will wish to see the Time Lord. And his--friend."

All the same, she's none too gentle about hauling Paul to his feet; he has to re-cross his wrists hastily behind his back, and if she notices the rope is gone it must not be very important to her.

\------

They're bundled into a small cabin on a shuttle, along with the TARDIS, because Teemu refused to go anywhere unless she was retrieved from the vault. She's camouflaged herself, in the cramped space, as a lightweight contraption resembling a bicycle; Paul's trying not to wonder what they'll do if they need to get back inside in a hurry.

"They couldn't even give us a window?" he wonders, squinting against the harsh overhead lights as he checks over the door. It's very decisively locked.

"It's not a big ship," Teemu observes. "And they seem like they're in a hurry. That moon orbits an inhabited planet--we're probably just taking a quick trip next door."

Paul sits down on the one small bed and closes his eyes, head dropping forward. "What's next door?"

"I guess we'll find out," Teemu says, and flops down onto the bed, lying back and kicking his feet up into Paul’s lap without waiting to be invited. "Seems like they think I'm important."

"That's their mistake, then," says Paul, and deserves the heel Teemu nudges into his ribs for it. "Hey." He shoves a hand in his pocket. "Here's your knife back."

"Thanks." Teemu sits up a moment and takes it away; there's a rustle as he tucks it back inside his coat cuff. "Trade you," he adds, and puts something in Paul's hand in return before settling back onto the mattress.

It's a pair of sunglasses--cool metal frames, so not the same plastic pair Paul lost back in the interrogation room. He can't get a good look at them, for obvious reasons, but he traces the frame absently with a finger once he's got them on.

"Hurting much?" Teemu asks.

"If I could just go easy on my eyes for a bit it'd be great," says Paul. "Thanks," he adds belatedly, and tries not to think too hard about Teemu carrying these around for him.

He can actually watch Teemu’s face now, which is always rewarding, but not particularly informative at the moment. He's just lying there, staring blankly at the locked door across from them.

"No idea at all what they want you for?"

"What wouldn't someone want with me?" Teemu grins over at him, the usual light suddenly back in his face. "I'm a genius, I'm charming, I'm nice to look at--"

“Ugh,” says Paul. "Never mind."

*******

There's no chance to see where they land, in any case. They're ushered from the shuttle directly onto an enclosed landing pad, and from there into an elevator that carries them and their guard downward with a smooth, self-satisfied hum. There’s a large unmarked crate there as well, which naturally nobody bothers to explain.

"So where are we going?" says Paul, since Teemu is apparently in one of his don't-spoil-the-surprise moods. The guard doesn't answer, but at least he tried.

The elevator halts in the center of a huge, chaotic room--charts and screens everywhere, people in uniforms bustling around and talking frantically, most but not all the same species as the guard who brought them here. There's no doubt who's in charge, though: a woman taller than the rest, long tail curling up behind her rather than dragging along the ground, with a complicated silver chain around her neck. "Is that them, General?"

"This one, Chancellor Prythin," says the guard, pushing Teemu forward; Paul keeps pace without needing the push. "The Time Lord. He can help us."

"Can I?" says Teemu vaguely.

It doesn't seem like Paul is necessary to this conversation, so he wanders away to see just what everyone here is so worked up about. No one is paying much attention to him. A team of people are dragging the crate out of the elevator and prying it open. There’s another bank of people on headsets coordinating evacuation plans, some more consulting a three-dimensional projection of a rippling sphere, empty but for a timer counting down--from two hours and change, if the numbers are translating correctly. Another team is monitoring the weather, in such technical detail that even with the TARDIS translating in his head Paul can only follow every fifth word or so.

"Big storm coming?" he asks.

The nearest uniformed person laughs, bitterly. "Storm's not the word for it, is it?"

"Then what?" Paul glances at the man's monitor, but he's still keeping an eye on Teemu, sitting on the edge of the Chancellor's work table. The Chancellor is talking to him with rising vehemence, and Teemu looks aggressively bored in a way that Paul recognizes as boding ill.

"Don't you know?" the man says. "It's the end of the world."

“The weather’s that bad, huh?”

“Not weather,” the man says, stepping aside so Paul can see. “Solar flares. Enough to fry this entire planet, if they hit the atmosphere tomorrow.”

“If?” Paul looks at the screen; it’s displaying the same two-hour countdown. “I take it there’s a plan.”

The man looks at him oddly, which is perfectly understandable. “Who let you in here, if you don’t know any of this?”

“Clerical error, I think.” This does not amuse the other guy as much as it amuses Paul. “But since I’m here, what’s the plan?”

The officer adjusts his screen, bringing up a diagram of a binary star system. One of the stars is orbited by a handful of planets; the other has none, and is flashing wildly. “Our twin star, there, is erupting. It’s never been this bad--when it peaks tomorrow, it’ll be strong enough to irradiate this whole planet beyond saving. But in two hours the system will be lined up just right. We can throw a shield around ourselves and our own sun, leave our moon outside, protect ourselves from the flares.”

“Sounds straightforward enough,” says Paul, and holds back the second half of that thought, which is _too easy to be true._ “What about that bank up on that moon? You won’t shield them?”

“Oh, their batteries drink that stuff up, they’ll be fine. The catch is, we can’t get them inside the shield, because--”

“You _what?_ ” says Teemu across the room, suddenly fully alert with indignation. Everyone turns to look at him except for Paul, who was looking anyway.

“Thanks,” says Paul to the officer, and picks his way back through the chaos to find out what the catch is.

“We don’t need your help,” the Chancellor-General is saying. “We’ve had years to study it; we’re fully prepared to operate it ourselves. But seeing as it’s Time Lord technology, and you so _conveniently_ arrived just before we use it, your opinion would be appreciated.”

“No,” says Teemu. The crate’s been taken apart, and he’s crouched down examining the machinery inside.

“You won’t advise us?”

“Of course I will,” Teemu says. “My advice is _no.”_

“I don’t see what choice they have,” Paul says, but then again he also doesn’t see what’s so terrible about the mechanism for--well, this is their planetary shield, he guesses. If it came over on the shuttle it must’ve been stored at the bank. All he can tell about it is that it has the same rough, brassy, mechanical look as the guts of the TARDIS, nothing like the smooth Star Trek blue and gray of the room around them. “What’s the problem?”

“This is a part of the mechanism for a transduction barrier.” For all that Teemu looks troubled, he’s running his fingers over it seemingly aimlessly. A little piece of home, Paul imagines. “There’s one like it protecting Gallifrey, sealing it off from the rest of the universe. Nothing gets through but a TARDIS, and only one with a pre-authorized code, psychically transmitted.”

“Okay, but you guys have no TARDISes, no key codes, and--” Paul glances up at the Chancellor-General. “Telepathic ability?”

“No,” she says shortly.

“So when you do this, you’re sealing yourselves in for good.”

“It’s not worth it,” says Teemu. His shoulder is pressed against Paul’s thigh; Paul isn’t sure which of them has edged closer to the other. He’s not sure why Teemu’s so upset, either, but he’s starting to get the idea.

Chancellor Prythin stiffens. “I asked your advice. Not permission.”

“And I say no to both.”

“Very well,” says the Chancellor. “Then you’d better take your ship and go, hadn’t you?”

“I shouldn’t let you do this.” Teemu is digging around in his pocket for something. Paul reaches down to touch his shoulder, thinking it’s only nervous energy, but Teemu shrugs him off with an irritated glance. “To your own people! Do you even know the hell--”

“Of watching a whole world die of radiation poisoning? I’d really rather not.”

“At least consider your options. There’s a whole day left.” Teemu has his little laser multitool out, twirling it between his fingers; if Paul didn’t know him better he’d think it was a threat. “To just bottle this world up and let it wither and die--”

“There are no options,” says the Chancellor. “And if you don’t wish to help, and you don’t leave, I’ll have you both removed, and you can stay here and _wither_ with us.”

*******

“Well,” says Paul, “here we are again. Good job. Aren’t you usually better at making friends than this?”

“Pffft,” says Teemu, without elaborating. He doesn’t really seem to be listening; he’s busy rummaging through his pockets. “Where did I put--ah.”

The door on this cell is a lot heavier than on the last one, but also much cruder-looking, metal with mechanical locks. Teemu is fiddling around the edges of it, wedging what looks like chewing gum into the cracks where the hinges would be on the outside, and then where all the latches are on the other side.

“Can I help you blow that wall up?” says Paul. “Or do you have it all under control?”

That gets a laugh. “Just sit back and enjoy the show.” Teemu glances back over his shoulder. “It shouldn’t do too much damage, but maybe hold onto something, just to be safe.”

This is probably wise advice, but Paul goes to look over Teemu’s shoulder anyway; he just likes watching him work. “Did you know what was in that vault? Before we came here.”

Teemu doesn’t meet his eyes. “I thought maybe--well, the TARDIS thought she saw something where it didn’t belong, and I thought it’d be fun to try breaking in either way. I didn’t expect this. Okay, ready?”

“Ready,” says Paul, and they both back a few healthy steps away from the door.

“Five,” says Teemu, “four, thr--”

The world crashes down around their ears.

When the smoke clears, Paul’s ears are ringing, but he can hear movement; his hearing isn’t actually blown out, thank God. He pushes up onto his knees, and his fallen sunglasses creak under his hand. Paul grabs them and puts them back on--not that it helps him see through the haze of dust. “Teemu?”

Someone starts laughing hoarsely a few yards away, which is as good an answer as any.

Paul scrambles over to kneel next to him. “You okay?”

Teemu rolls onto his back to lean up on his elbows. His hair is a wreck, full of dirt; there are a few small smoking holes scattered across the shoulders of his coat. “Did it work?”

Another chunk crashes down from the freshly gaping hole in the wall. “I think we’ve lost any claim to subtlety, but yeah.” Paul brushes soot absently off Teemu’s sleeve, and then his shoulder. “Don’t know if we can save your coat, though.”

“Oh, again? Ugh.” Teemu’s brow creases, but only for a moment; he tilts his head, cheek brushing Paul’s thumb far too briefly. “What? Is something else wrong?”

Paul hadn’t realized he was staring; at least, he hadn’t realized he was that obvious. “You’re fine,” he concludes, and pushes to his feet. ‘C’mon, we’re short on time, right?”

Teemu gets up as well, letting his ruined coat slide off and stay on the floor, though he glances back at it and pauses. “That’s not my blood,” he says, a bit of a question, and he isn’t wrong; the smear on the shoulder is bright red, clearly human.

Paul realizes for the first time that his palms are stinging--scraped raw, where he caught himself when he fell. He holds them out by way of explanation. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Who’s worrying?” But Teemu catches Paul’s hands in his to make sure--so quick Paul could almost have imagined it, the lightest brush of fingers on the backs of his wrists. “Come on, like you said--not a lot of time to spare.”

It’s nothing, half a second of contact, and everything. It’s enough to make Paul freeze up, even as Teemu lets go and sweeps away down the hall, because Teemu’s always been overwhelmingly affectionate, but--but. That delicate, self-conscious touch isn’t how friends touch each other, not on any planet.

He thinks he understands what this is, or at least what it could be. Why he’s never found the right word for their relationship. Why Teemu has always--from the day they met, oh God, what the hell--always acted like the first order of business was Paul’s happiness. And Paul wondered what Teemu wanted from him, when maybe the answer’s been too simple and obvious to see: maybe Teemu wants what Paul wants.

He’s had to stuff this kind of thing back down into its box before, when he caught himself looking the wrong way, but never like this. The interest’s never been mutual--has never had months upon months to root itself in deep like this, because he’s never let it. That makes it worse, because he’s going to have to explain to Teemu that they can’t be more than what they are, because--because--

Why _can’t_ they?

Paul is never going to play for a professional hockey team again. For the first time since long before he was even drafted, his personal decisions are actually his own--not a team’s or a league’s, nothing to do with maintaining an image. He thinks he knows, now, who he’s going to be, and the answer is _whoever the fuck he wants to be_.

And he wants to be the guy Teemu looks at like--well, the way Teemu’s been looking at him all along.

“Teemu,” he says, hurrying to catch up, with no idea what to say but boiling over with the need to say _something._ “Teemu, hey, I--the TARDIS is the other way.”

“I know.” Teemu’s sobered up frighteningly fast while Paul’s world was turning inside out. “We can’t leave yet.”

Paul frowns. “We can’t have more than--what, an hour?--until the shield is sealed.”

“Exactly. Plenty of time to stop it.”

"Okay," says Paul warily, and back-burners all other potential conversations for the moment, with a mix of regret and guilty relief. "Do we have another plan you're not telling me about?"

"No," says Teemu, with a rare and alarming chill in his voice. "But if we just have the time to think of one--"

"Yeah, this argument went over with her so well when you tried it before."

Teemu glares at him without breaking stride. "You think we shouldn't even try?"

"I think there's a saying on Earth about trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. It's not a very nice one." Paul grabs at Teemu's arm, finally getting him to pause outside the door. "Teemu, she's doing the best she can with what she's got. All you're going to do is get us trapped here."

"You don't know that for sure. Trust me, Paul, don't you trust me?" Teemu shakes Paul's hand off and slams the door open, marching in and leaving Paul bewildered in his wake.

Chancellor-General Prythin looks up from the table and scowls at him, fronds shading red at her neck. "I thought we got them out of the way."

"No," says Teemu, as impassible as a tree falling across a road. "No, you're going to listen."

Teemu is usually so unintimidating that it’s hard to believe that he’s six or seven times Paul’s age; that he’s absurdly smart, has inhumanly fast reflexes and a couple extra senses to boot; that he comes from maybe the most powerful and technologically advanced civilization in the history of the universe. All of which is--well, pretty hot, on the days when Paul is being honest with himself, but maybe too easy to forget.

Well, he’s sure as hell remembering it now.

"You don't know what you're doing," says Teemu, and, God, he really is going to go around this same merry-go-round again, and the Chancellor will throw them in another cell, and that's where they'll be when--

"Teemu," Paul tries, once more, for all the good it does him.

"I know exactly what I'm doing," says Prythin. "I'm taking the only chance I have to save the people I can still save. Would someone get them _out_?"

"Some chance," says Teemu, with a definite tinge of bitterness. "The chance to watch your whole world wither and slowly die out while the rest of the universe flows around you. The chance to bottle everyone up until they turn on each other, trapped and scared, over centuries--"

"Do you think I'm doing this for fun?" Prythin demands. "Do you think I haven't thought it through?"

"I think there has to be a better way to protect yourself. Just give me the time to help you, to figure it out."

Prythin stares him down, the angry red of her fronds deepening even further. "I won't risk it, and that's final. You have twenty minutes to get out of here. Then again--" She considers him for a moment. “You could be useful, a brain like yours. If you want to stick around so badly.”

Paul pulls himself together and gets a grip on Teemu's arm again; firm enough not to be shaken off this time. "We're going," he says, mainly to Prythin, since Teemu seems unreceptive to the idea. "I'm sorry about this." It seems grossly inadequate, like he's apologizing for spilling coffee on her shirt, but what is he supposed to say? "Teemu, for fuck's sake, come on."

Teemu rounds on him, jaw working furiously, but there's something pained in his eyes that Paul can't cope with right now. "How dare you--"

"We. Will. Be. Trapped. Here." Paul seriously considers threatening to leave him behind, but he never would, and they both know it. “Let her do what she has to do.”

*******

They file into the TARDIS in silence; Teemu offers her his usual “Hey, baby, miss us?” but it’s halfhearted. Paul heads straight down the stairs to the console, keeping a safe distance from Teemu at all times, and begins mechanically to get ready for takeoff. He doesn’t have to actually look at Teemu for them to get this done; God knows they’ve done it in concert enough times by now.

Instead of making himself useful, though, Teemu braces himself on the console and squints at him. "Is there a law, on your planet, that keeps you from saying when something upsets you?"

“What if,” says Paul flatly, because right now he just doesn’t have the time or patience for Teemu to pick at his brain like a scab. “What if you maybe stop--being clever and having _ideas_ for five minutes. Maybe ten or fifteen, until we’ve made our getaway from the last one.”

“I can’t _stop_ being clever.”

Paul points at the couch against the wall. “Then can you sit over there and keep it to yourself for a bit?”

Startlingly, Teemu goes, and manages to keep quiet for maybe an entire three minutes, long enough for Paul to finish getting them the hell out of there.

Long enough that they can both watch on the monitor as the planet fades and vanishes out of space, as though it had never existed at all.

“Are--” Teemu begins cautiously, when it’s over. “Paul, are you okay?”

“No,” says Paul, turning around to say it to his face. “What the hell is wrong with you? It’s one thing to, to just assume the best of everybody all the time, but you can’t just _push_ people into being their best selves or something. Just because it was what _I_ needed--”

Teemu’s gaze sharpens with an emotion Paul can’t immediately identify. “Was it?”

“...that’s not the _point!_ ” Paul spreads his hands, lost for words. He’s having trouble articulating why he feels like he’s been slapped in the face. This isn’t new information about Teemu by any means, but it hurts to be bluntly reminded of it just as he was starting to think--well, that this was somewhere he might want to stay _._ Or, more accurately, someone he might want to stay _with._

He may be furious right now, but that want isn’t going away; it’s just settling heavily into his chest, where he can’t ignore it any more. He wants this to work, he thought it had been, and if he’s been misjudging Teemu all this time--

“You lied to me,” he says suddenly--this isn’t new, but it’s only just clicked together in his head. “You fucking--you knew there was Time Lord tech, you knew _something_ was there, didn’t you? That’s why we went, and I asked what was going on, and you lied to my face and said you didn’t know.”

“I knew there was technology where it shouldn’t be,” Teemu admits. “I didn’t think you’d like the idea of going just to make sure no one was abusing it.”

Paul just stares. “You scare me,” he says. Teemu looks like he’s been punched in the gut, which wasn’t the intention, but somehow isn’t enough to derail Paul from his train of thought. “I think I know you and then you start throwing your weight around on some planet we’ve never been to, and jerking me around on a string, and, hell, I’m just a puny little four-dimensional human. Maybe I’m just here so you have an audience. Maybe I don’t know _what_ you’re capable of.”

Teemu opens and shuts his mouth. “Should I just not _bother?_ ”

“People were going to _die,_ Teemu. You don’t just march in and go hi, everyone, I’m a Time Lord so all of you are wrong. And not even offer another solution!” Paul offers a him a grim smile. “But that’s how you got taught, right, growing up? This is why you left home, because you didn’t want to be the person you acted like today.”

“I left home,” says Teemu, “because the Time Lords just wanted _so badly_ to sit alone outside the universe, and the whole world was fading and dying like that. You have no idea, Paul, you can’t imagine. It’s just a longer, slower death.”

“Oh, fuck you, you think I can’t imagine. How old do you think the human race is, five minutes?” Paul folds his arms on the railing. His head hurts, but under the circumstances he’s pretty sure that would still be happening if he was perfectly healthy. “What about the option where they don’t die? You couldn’t maybe put some time into that instead? No extra brain lobes to spare?”

“There might have _been_ time,” says Teemu, head in his hands, “if they hadn’t _sealed themselves off.”_

“Or if you’d tried to _actually help_ instead of telling everyone how smart you are. But hey, at least you get to keep your moral high ground.” Paul flexes his fingers and winces; he’d forgotten about his skinned palms. “Look, I’m not your fucking conscience, Teemu, you can figure this all out yourself. I’m going to go fix up my hands.”

Teemu doesn’t try to stop him leaving the room, which is merciful, because honestly Paul’s all yelled out for the moment.

*******

It’s not like they haven’t squabbled before, though Paul doesn’t recall it stinging this badly; it’s not like he has nothing to do with his time without Teemu, though having to avoid the console room does make life a little more complicated. It helps a lot that his new little robot buddy is willing to go get food for him, so he doesn’t have to risk running into Teemu in the kitchen.

It never occurs to him to wonder what else the droid gets up to, until he wanders through an unfamiliar door and finds some kind of machine room. Not really Paul’s territory around here, but there’s a concerning rattling coming from further inside; it turns out to be the robot, unattended, fixing something in the wall. The moment Paul spots it it jumps and retracts its arm.

Paul crouches down and rests his hand on its back; it chirps a sullen greeting. “Hey, squeaky,” he says; it’s as good an epithet as any until he can think of a better name. “How’d you get in here?”

There’s wiring in the walls--Paul doesn’t know _why_ , because if he understands correctly the TARDIS doesn’t actually need it, but there is. Some of it looks frayed, a few cables still shiny where they’re freshly soldered back together. “Okay,” says Paul, “fine, but how did--” He glances up at the ceiling; why he’s gotten in the habit of that, he really couldn’t say. “Do you two talk to each other?”

The droid bleeps at him, more enthusiastically this time, and projects an image of an antenna emitting radio waves. It’s a decent mime; maybe the TARDIS can learn something from it. Paul can’t wait to--

\--well, to tell Teemu about it. Sooner or later.

*******

It takes two full days, but eventually Teemu comes and finds him first.

Paul's pushing his luck a bit, maybe, by trying to explain to the TARDIS how to build a golf course; he's gotten as far as a sunny field with a pond in it, the grass is only a little more blue than Earth normal, and he's thinking that maybe that's enough and it might be a nice place to take a nap. Instead he gets Teemu, who comes in the door and says "Are you awake?"

"Guess so," says Paul, staring up at the sky. This little exercise in godhood is more complicated than he expected; he thought maybe some even nonspecific lighting would be better than regular sunlight, save him from glare when he's shooting towards the sun, but the more he looks at it the more unsettling it becomes. He feels like a _Truman Show_ character. "Something wrong?"

"A lot, I think." Teemu sits down on the grass next to him, just a little too close; the proximity is familiar and comforting, despite everything. "Paul, I fake it really well, but I'm not a god, I can't do everything."

"I know," says Paul. "You're still an asshole, though."

"Paul, there was really--there was no time, there wasn’t a rabbit I could pull from a hat to save a whole planet."

"Just the quick death or the slow death," says Paul, and scrubs his hands over his face. "I made the same mistake, I guess. Acting like you could fix anything if you just tried harder. That was pretty shitty of me, putting that all on you."

Teemu nudges his thigh. "But?"

"But you still went and--" Paul waves a hand helplessly. "Like rubbing salt in a wound, telling someone she's got a terrible choice and a worse choice and the terrible one's still going to end badly. Even if you were right. That was never going to do anyone any good."

"They could still get out someday," says Teemu, but he doesn't sound like he believes it. "They have scientists. People can do really amazing things, when they have to."

"Maybe," says Paul. He doesn't know how to go on from there.

Teemu nudges him again and just leaves his hand there, resting lightly on Paul's forearm. "I'm sorry, Paul."

Paul looks over at him, finally. "What for?"

"You're mad at me and you don't know what for? I'm sorry for pulling you into this, that's what. And for lying to you. Especially for that."

It's very kind of him, really, to say it so that Paul doesn't have to; Teemu's good at that. "I thought we were--" he can't get out the word _partners_ , with Teemu's hand on his arm for no reason like it is, but it’s the right word all the same. "I thought we were equals here. You tricked me into this, like something to just--haul around behind you."

"You know I don't think of you like that. Never." Teemu squeezes his arm. "But I was acting like it, and--I'm so sorry."

"Don't do it again," says Paul, but he feels like he can meet Teemu's eyes now; he feels like he’s getting through what he needs to get through. "I know you're not like me, I wouldn't want you to be, but--" He can hear a faint plea in his own voice, and he hates it. He doesn’t even know what he’s asking for. Asking the universe, maybe, for this not to be a mistake.

Teemu may not be warm, but it’s never felt right to think of him as cold either; he’s too unmistakably _present_ all the time, and Paul really wishes he wasn’t quite so aware of that right this second. He still feels brittle, not over it yet, but--but Teemu’s thumb is stroking his arm, just an absent little movement, and Paul can feel it _everywhere_.

Even the suspicion that Teemu might be interested has been eating Paul up inside. Whatever _he_ wants, that’s his own problem to deal with--or not deal with. But Teemu wanting is entirely unmanageable, because Paul needs to actually sit down and think through what that would mean, and he can’t do that. God knows he’s been trying.

He can’t form an opinion on anything Teemu might ever ask or offer him, beyond _yes, please, me too._

“You know, don’t you, I don’t think you’re insignificant,” Teemu says again, after a minute. “Of all the things--no. Anything but that.”

It hangs in the air between them for a minute, heavy with potential, but Paul decides he’s not quite ready to take the bait. Not yet.

 

* * *

 

By way of a peace offering, Paul forfeits their next game. “There was that festival you wanted to take me to, right? Every thousand years.”

“One thousand and thirty-nine,” says Teemu, as if by rote. He still seems a little distant, and Paul doesn’t know what to make of it; out of the two of them, Paul’s the one who closes off when something’s bothering him. He’s used to Teemu being the opposite, opening up so readily to people that most don’t realize he’s held anything back. Sure, he’s been as cheerful and affectionate as ever, but he’s always been so free with touch--until lately. Teemu hasn’t been touching Paul at all, and it’s _weird._

Paul doesn’t have a clue what he’s supposed to say to snap them out of this. What he can do, for the moment, is bump a friendly shoulder against Teemu’s and leave it there, leaning just a little closer than necessary to watch him work the controls. “So what kind of holiday is it?”

“You’ll _see_ ,” says Teemu, but he doesn’t lean away. “Why can you never wait five minutes?”

*******

For one thing, when he heard _festival_ , Paul hadn’t expected so much--well, dark cavernous emptiness. “Where is everyone?”

Teemu’s relaxed a few inches since they landed here; his hand settles for a moment between Paul’s shoulders. “They only come a few at a time.”

It’s something like a cathedral, or ten cathedrals. Whatever they’re standing inside, it’s being carved from the inside out--rough columns barely hacked out in some places, in others intricate carving and windows and archways opening out onto black sky and stars.

An echo drifts back, at last: _\--is everyone?_

When Paul leaves Teemu’s side to go look out a window, there’s nothing at all outside; not even ground below them. When he gives in to the urge to dig a penny out of his pocket and drop it, a force field catches it a few feet down. “Is this an asteroid?”

“Close! A comet.” Teemu is examining the glittering walls; Paul presses his hand to the windowsill and finds it cold. The gleam everywhere isn’t crystal, it’s ice. “Every one thousand and thirty-nine years, the orbit of Centerix B crosses through a cloud of comets.”

“And they do this?” Paul wanders off along the wall. He’s beginning to realize it isn’t just one huge space; there are balconies and catwalks up above, doorways leading out into corridors. “Why? I mean, it’s beautiful, but why?”

Teemu frowns over his shoulder. “Isn’t that enough?”

“It could be, but I feel like it usually isn’t.” Paul squints at the ice; there’s writing there, but it’s next to impossible to read, scratched messily into the dirty ice. “Is this graffiti? Already?”

There’s no answer; Teemu’s gone poking around somewhere in the opposite direction, either out of earshot or ignoring him.

“I’m sorry, can I help you?”

The priest is young and nervous, and he has horns and hooves, which would probably send Earth theologians into a tailspin for years if they knew. Decorative patterns have been etched into his horns to match the ones on the walls. Paul almost forgets not to stare. “We’re visiting,” he says warily, because if there’s a lie they’re supposed to be telling to account for their presence, Teemu hasn’t shared it with him. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course!” The priest smiles pleasantly, but he’s definitely not all in it; he keeps glancing upwards, to where a handful of mechanical drones flit around cutting further into the ice. “Anyone can make a wish--have you made yours yet?”

So not graffiti, then. Now that Paul knows what to look for, there are little patches of writing everywhere--scattered over the wall, and even on the ground between his feet. He shifts his stance, trying to make sure he hasn’t stepped on any of them. “What happens to all of this? After the comet passes.”

The priest doesn’t seem worried about where he’s standing, for whatever that’s worth. “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

Paul smiles apologetically. “Like I said--visiting.”

The priest gestures, encompassing the whole space. “In a few hundred years, when it passes the sun, all of this will melt. All these prayers, released directly to the universe to be heard. But meantime, if you don’t mind--” He seems, suddenly, to settle back into himself, just a nervous young man again. “They never mention, in ancient writings and so on, what a mess it is getting the thing built.”

Paul offers the appropriate sympathy, borrows a metal pick, and lets the poor man go on his way. He doesn’t look up to see whether Teemu’s writing anything, or let himself speculate on what it might be if he was. What would a Time Lord even need to wish for?

Before he left Earth this would have been easy, he thinks, smoothing his hand unnecessarily over an empty patch near the base of a column. Just the one obvious, all-important wish. But now--

Paul looks up despite himself. Teemu is a good hundred yards away, crouched down with his long coat pooling wide around him. It looks like he’s etching something into the floor.

Paul can think of a few things worth asking the universe for, these days.

He’s just about finished writing, and wondering how to find the priest again to give the pick back, when he first registers it--the floor is humming faintly, under the hand Paul’s braced his weight on while he writes. He leans down to put his ear to the floor and yeah, he can definitely hear the thrum of something mechanical-sounding. Part of the construction process, probably.

He finds the priest up a flight of stairs, in a kind of command center set up in one of the long high galleries, seated in front of a bank of computer screens. "Here's your pick back."

"Thank you." The young priest turns away from his screens to take it back. "I hope fulfillment blesses you."

"Thanks," says Paul uncertainly; it feels like there's a ritual response he doesn't know. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Brother Virt is my name." Virt smiles politely at him. "And you are?"

"Just Paul is fine. It's nice to meet you--I hope you don't mind my curiosity."

"Of course not! It's a nice change from playing building foreman."

Paul takes this as leave to perch on the edge of the table. "This is a big holiday for Centerans, right?"

Virt nods. "The biggest we have."

"Then forgive me, but--" Paul looks around. "I thought it'd be an honor, you know, being in charge of building this. You don't seem very happy about it."

"Oh, heavens, no, it isn't. It's a burden." Virt laughs bitterly. "These temples are so huge that people think they just happen on their own. If it goes right it's merely the universe working as planned. If it goes wrong, it's my fault."

"What, exactly, do you need to do?"

"Supervise the machinery, mainly. It's all pre-programmed drones, totally automated. Very boring, as long as everything's working. Otherwise I greet people as they're brought up to leave their wishes here."

Paul smiles sympathetically. "Not really what you imagine when you join a priesthood, is it?"

Virt shakes his head. "Not at all."

There’s a clatter on the stairs and Teemu appears to join them, a whirlwind of movement even when there’s no urgency. “There you are! I thought I heard your voice. Did you make a good wish?”

“I’m not _telling you_ ,” says Paul, mildly scandalized, and forgets he’s talking to aliens until he realizes both Teemu and Virt are looking at him strangely. “Sorry, I guess you don’t--on Earth the superstition is, if you make a wish on something, it won’t happen if you tell anybody.”

“Forget I asked, then,” says Teemu lightly. “But I’ve got high hopes for mine.”

It seems safer not to address that one. “Oh hey, sorry,” says Paul. “Teemu, this is Brother Virt. Virt, this is Teemu.”

“A pleasure.” Teemu moves around to examine the monitors Virt’s neglecting. “This is really an amazing system, you know? Very clever, very efficient.”

Virt smiles wanly. “I wish I could take the credit for it. Unfortunately, there’s another group teleporting up soon, I’ll have to go greet them and show them around.”

"Is it okay if we look around up here?" Teemu asks.

"Obviously we're strangers," Paul adds hastily, "you don't have to--"

"You seem all right," says Virt, a little uncertain. "It's these VIPs that I can't trust--always think they have a right to touch everything, but guess who takes the blame if it breaks."

"We'll guard it for you, then," Teemu offers. "Good luck with them."

"Thank you. I'll be right back." Virt gives them one last doubtful look, but heads downstairs with a clatter of hooves on the rough ice of the stairs.

"Poor man," says Paul, glancing aimlessly around. This is interesting and all, but he gets the feeling Teemu's after something, and these days that feeling is a little more ominous than it used to be. "I think it's just him and the machinery up here, most days. No wonder he's stressed."

"Nice of us to give him someone to talk to, then." Teemu sits in Virt's recently vacated stool and spins around a few times. "I just want to get a look at the programming for these drones--it's really fantastic, don't you think? All planned out ahead and melted from the inside."

"Very impressive," Paul agrees. "Teemu, what do you want, here?"

"I wanted someplace nice and quiet and soothing for you to visit," says Teemu mournfully. "Just once."

"Would you tell me what's wrong," Paul says, giving up on patience.

"I just think it's very odd," says Teemu. "I went wandering around--this place is big and beautiful and impressive, right? But there are tunnels in the back, and running under the floor. Not planned architecture, like all of this is, to maximize surface area, it's all dark and cramped. No one would want to write a wish there if it mattered to them. They're like service tunnels, maybe, but there aren't any people working here, so who uses them?"

Paul shrugs. "Some kind of emergency setup? If anything's damaged up here, or the atmosphere fails, it'd be easier to trap air in narrow tunnels than a big open space like this."

Teemu points sharply at him. "That--is very clever, Paul."

Paul smiles, startled. "Thank you. Oh--that also explains the weird noise under the floor."

"What, that hum? I heard that too, in the walls, but." Teemu taps half-heartedly at a keyboard. "Listen to those drones out there, would you?"

Paul sticks his head out between a pair of columns and waits for a drone to fly by. They're easy to spot, since they emit spurts of blue flame of varying sizes; one wanders by with a thin blue jet, carving a complicated pattern into the ice below where Paul is standing.

It's almost completely silent, apart from the _puff, puff_ of the flame.

"It's not drones making the noise," Paul concludes, glancing back at Teemu. The view's interesting too, though; he can make out Virt, a small figure a few stories down, with a small cluster of people around him in equally fancy clothes. Paul hopes they're not giving him too much trouble. "Is there something else they could be using for rougher work?"

"They could be." Teemu taps away at the keyboard. "But I don't think so."

Paul goes over to look over his shoulder, for all the good it does him; it all looks like computer code. "What else could it be?"

"Something alive, maybe? Things can live in ice, you know, or be preserved there and woken up later.'

"God, I hope not,' says Paul, who is more than willing to let John Carpenter stay on a movie screen where he belongs. "But you don't think it's anything the Centerans brought with them?"

Teemu shakes his head. "I'm going to run down and get some stuff from the TARDIS. Keep an eye out until I get back?"

"Sure," says Paul, and sits down to watch the garble still scrolling over the screen. Normally Teemu would pat his shoulder or something on the way out; Paul never thinks anything of it usually, but he does now, because it doesn't happen.

The screen is hypnotic. His eyes start to glaze over as he sits there, waiting for either Teemu or Virt to come back. At first he thinks he's imagining the faint hum in his ears--he's had issues with tinnitus before, not for a long time, but enough to make the noise unremarkable.

Then it starts getting louder, rapidly. Like something coming towards him.

Paul whirls around and stumbles back against the desk. A sparkling, buzzing swarm of God knows what bursts out of the wall, just a few yards behind him and plows through a column

The column starts to crack, loudly and ominously, and Paul braces himself to make a run for it, but a drone appears, spraying water instead of flame. The water freezes in moments, and the column is solid again--clever machines, indeed. A few bits of the cloud are caught in the spray, and they clatter to the floor; the rest of the swarm whirls around and vanishes back through a fresh patch of wall.

When Paul's got his breath back, he crouches down near the freshly repaired column; against the glitter of dirty ice, it's a challenge to spot the now-inert metal of whatever that cloud was made of. He finds a scrap of paper and scoops it up, barely larger than dust.

Naturally, it's only now that Virt chooses to reappear up the stairs. "They're making their wishes," he says, with profound relief. "I'm almost free for now."

"Maybe get them out of here more quickly, if you can." Paul looks at the wall; there are holes bored in it where the cloud appeared and disappeared, each the size of his head. "I think--I think something's gone wrong."

Virt goes pale; he looks younger than ever. "Is it my fault?"

"No," says Paul. "But still, go get them out."

Virt groans and heads back down the stairs; partway down there's an audible collision and an unintelligible conversation, as he runs into Teemu coming back up.

*******

"Nanobots," says Teemu. He's returned loaded down with a box of paraphernalia, fortunately including a pocket magnifier, and is looking at the dead metal Paul managed to retrieve. "Definitely not Centeran. Here already, probably, when the Centerans got here."

"What are they for?" says Paul, dutifully playing Watson.

"Who knows. They're trying to carve this comet out, though, into something besides the Centeran temple. The whole place could break down, that's the important thing."

Virt comes back up the stairs--this time for good--just in time to hear that last sentence. "You seem like you know about these things," he says, openly hopeful. "Please, just make it stop."

Teemu looks up from his magnifier and smiles at him. "That, I can do. But I'll have to reprogram some of your drones, is that okay?"

"Well." Virt fidgets. "If you have to--but I still have a deadline, you know."

Teemu waves a hand. "Oh, I'll put them back the way they were."

"Then go ahead." Virt swallows. "I guess."

Teemu rummages in his box and comes up with a thing like a Geiger counter. "We just need to lure them back out of those tunnels, into the open." He sets the thing aside for the moment and sits down at the keyboard, fingers rattling away. The drones should be able to destroy them, no problem, and you can be up here to make sure they get everything."

Paul has to actively stop himself from watching Teemu's hands. “And where are you going?”

“Down into the tunnels,” says Teemu, not looking around. “Have a nice scenic walk, you know, track down that cloud so I can lure it back into the open. Want to come along?”

“I’ll stay here,” says Paul, sitting down next to him. “We should have two people up here to keep an eye on the drones, in case something calls one of us away. But yeah, go ahead, enjoy your creepy dark tunnels.”

“Oh, I will,” says Teemu, turning to grin at him. “Enjoy sitting up here where _nothing is happening_.”

He pauses a moment, like there’s something else he wants to say--but instead Teemu tips Paul’s chin up with a finger and kisses him lightly. Then he stands, gathers up his detector and leaves.

Paul just sits there, frozen, staring out at the stairs down which Teemu is now long gone.

Virt looks up in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Did he just--” Paul begins _._ He doesn’t know how to finish the question, so he spins his stool back around to face the bank of monitors, a satisfying movement that lets him feel for five whole seconds like his life is under control. “Nothing. Never mind. What do I do?”

*******

"Paul," says Teemu in his ear after a while. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure. Everything okay down there?"

"Everything's fine, I just wondered--is Brother Virt listening?"

"Now he wants to talk." Paul glances up at Virt sheepishly and points at his ear; Virt nods and takes his own headset out. "Okay. What's up?"

Teemu hesitates. "You said, before, that you were scared of me."

Paul pushes his chair away from the monitors, to try and garner just a few feet of privacy. "Oh God, that. I'm sorry about that."

"But did you mean it?"

"I--no." Paul sighs. "Not exactly. Can I explain? Please."

"Okay." Teemu sounds calm enough, but Paul remembers the way he looked when they had this conversation the first time around, and feels a premature pang of guilt all the same.

They don’t talk about it much, or ever, but Paul thinks Teemu was pretty lonely before they met. He aches when he thinks about it--the sheer wrongness of Teemu, who likes everyone, rattling around the universe by himself.

"Okay," Paul echoes, buying a moment while he grasps for a way to articulate what's been bothering him. "You know the TARDIS--she's twelve-dimensional or something, right?"

"Eleven," says Teemu, as if by reflex. "What about it?"

"So the way she looks to me--like a car or boat or whatever on the outside, a bunch of hallways inside, that's just a little bit of her, right? Because she's too complicated for me to understand head-on."

"Right."

"Teemu," says Paul. It's a thoughtless and silly question he's about to ask, and he knows it, but he can't help the need to ask it. "Are you--you are really just a person, right? Even if you can see in five dimensions or whatever, you're not like the TARDIS, you're not just a bit of something bigger?"

There's a crackle that might be a startled laugh from Teemu; it's hard to be sure, but it sounds very familiar. "I'm not secretly twelve-dimensional, Paul, I promise. I'm just a person like you."

"Well," Paul admits. "Not _exactly_ like me."

"No," says Teemu, and there's a definite laugh this time. "Have you been worrying about this?"

"Not exactly, it's just--I thought I knew you pretty well by now."

 _"_ You do." Teemu sounds abruptly serious again. "You know me better than anyone has in a long time. Maybe ever--didn’t you know?"

"Oh." Paul swallows. “That’s--I’m glad.”

“At least I hope so,” says Teemu. The words are light, but his tone isn’t. “Whoever this guy is you think I am, you seem to really like him.”

Teemu cares very deeply, apparently, about living up to Paul’s expectations. Teemu carries Paul’s spare sunglasses for him. Teemu _kissed him_ like it was the most obvious and natural thing in the world _,_ and God, Paul could crawl right out of his skin right now if it would let them have this out face to face. “Yeah,” he says finally, with an enormous effort. “Yeah, that guy’s okay, I guess.”

Teemu takes a deep breath. “That’s a relief.”

“I’ll see you soon, okay?” Paul says into the radio, as steadily as he’s able. “Have fun.”

“Don’t I always?” says Teemu, and clicks the channel off.

“Are you all right?” Virt asks. He’s staring, but Paul can’t really blame him.

“Ask me tomorrow,” says Paul, and goes back to watching his monitor.

It's only a few minutes more until there's a yell over the radio, startling Paul and Virt in unison. "Found them!" Teemu says, breathless. "They--oh, okay, they really like this signal."

Paul hunches forward towards his screen. "You okay?"

"Fine, I don't think they're dangerous. Keep an eye out, both of you, I'm on my way up."

In moments Teemu appears on the main floor of the temple, materializing from a dark spot Paul would never have even spotted for an opening in the wall. The whirling silver cloud is close behind him, but it bolts directly upward, towards the drones hovering in wait in the center of the space.

"Now--" Teemu yells, echoing bizarrely through the temple and in their ears, and Paul bears down on the keyboard. The drones light up outside the gallery-it must be a fantastic show, if only he could look directly at it, but he's occupied right now. Far from their usual carefully focused beams, Teemu's reset them to let out enormous gusts of flame. There's an unpleasant crackling noise as the nanobots sizzle, fry, and rain down dead on the floor; part of the cloud shies away, but Paul and Virt are able to steer the drones after them, turning the remainder to ash. The only thing missing is an Atari joystick, really.

The moment they're clear to, Virt scrambles to look over the railing and see what they've done. "Oh," he says sadly. "Oh, no."

"What?" says Paul, alarmed, and goes over to see what the problem is.

It's just a bit of a mess downstairs; the drones have gone quiet, hovering in midair without any further instructions to follow. The floor is covered with charred metal, pitted in places from the heat; melted smooth in others--including the corner where Paul and Teemu originally arrived.

"People's wishes," says Virt mournfully. "Including yours--they're gone."

"I'm sorry," says Paul, although he's distracted by tracking Teemu as he walks across the temple floor, back towards them. "I know they're important."

"Better that than destroy the whole temple," says Virt, but the thought doesn't seem to cheer him up much. “We can freeze back over the rough places, but--” He shrugs helplessly.

He’s trailed off along the gallery, surveying the damage, when Teemu returns. “Everything okay?”

“There was some collateral damage,” says Paul, and nods down at the melted patch of floor.

Teemu leans on the rail next to him to look it over. “Well,” he says after a minute, “aren’t you going to ask me what I wished for?”

Paul squints at him. “It’s bad luck, I told you.”

“It’s safe now, isn’t it? says Teemu. “Go on, ask.”

“Okay, fine, it’s your funeral. What did you wish for?”

“To be just a little braver,” says Teemu, which is ridiculous, because he’s the foolhardiest person Paul knows; but he holds Paul’s eyes a moment, and. Oh. That. “Come on, I’ve got to go put those drones back to work, or Virt’ll break down in tears.”

“I’ll get your gear back to the TARDIS,” Paul offers. He needs space to breathe--just a minute or two. “See you there.”

"You know," says Virt as Paul passes him, "I've been thinking."

Paul turns to look at him, arms full. "And?"

"About the wishes that were melted away." Virt is leaning on the railing further down along the gallery, contemplating the ruined patch of floor below them. "This temple is built to melt. It's only when those words evaporate away that we know the wishes have been heard. So really, all we did was let those people--and you--be heard a little sooner, and what's the harm in that?"

*******

There are few of Paul’s passions that don’t seem like they’re going to come back around and bite him; swimming is one of them, thank God, so the pool is where he generally goes when he needs time and space to think. When in similar moods, Teemu tends to vanish into the mechanical bowels of the TARDIS, beneath the console room--scaring the hell out of Paul, once, by staying down there for nearly a week. Teemu hardly ever goes near the swimming pool, and Paul hardly ever goes below the console room; it seems only fair.

Paul doesn’t feel much like going swimming, though. Not today.

The TARDIS machinery is just an expanse of huge, chattering clockwork--except that it seems to go on forever, with no visible walls in any direction. When Paul looks more closely at an enormous gear, it seems to be made up of smaller, equally complex machinery. It’s almost certainly all three-dimensional projections of something more mind-breaking, or a psychically imposed metaphor, or something.

Metaphor or not, he finds Teemu lying on his back under an engine, fussing at it with a wrench like it’s actually doing some good. “Hey,” says Paul, and knocks his foot gently against Teemu’s leg before he sits down on the catwalk.

Teemu scrambles out and sits up to face him. His sleeves are rolled up, too many of his shirt buttons are open, and he’s actually smudged with (presumably also metaphorical) grease like some kind of romance novel cliche. There’s a smear on his collarbone near the hollow of his throat, and Paul--and Paul--fuck. Paul is sure he came down here knowing what he was going to say, but he’s completely forgotten now.

It occurs to him, with a dizzying jolt, that it may be more than courtesy that’s been keeping Teemu away when Paul works out.

“Hello,” says Teemu, when the moment stretches out too long. “Did you want something?”

“You kissed me,” says Paul blankly; if he had a gentler way to open the discussion, it’s gone for good.

Teemu sighs and leans towards him, elbows on his knees. “Well, yes. That is what you do, isn’t it, when you--”

“When you what?”

“When you want to kiss someone?”

Paul has a feeling of having been dropped into an old _Star Trek_ episode without a parachute; he can’t tell whether he’s being made fun of. It’s possible that this is all a cultural misunderstanding, that people on Gallifrey kiss their friends like that as a matter of course. He could still suggest as much, and Teemu would probably play along, and whatever’s happening here would be safely put to a stop.

It’s _possible_ that this is all a misunderstanding, but Teemu’s much too smart for that, and also Paul would make a terrible Captain Kirk.

“Why?” he says, and winces. It isn’t the right question. He doesn’t know what the right question is. His hand seems to be on Teemu’s shoulder anyway, sliding over to cup the side of his neck; he can feel Teemu’s odd syncopated pulse, thumping in the crook of his shoulder instead of under his jaw.

“Why then? Because you were being so exactly you, and I--” Teemu lets out a long sigh instead of continuing, as though he doesn’t know the next word, as though a guess isn’t enough to knock Paul’s breath right out of him.

Paul reaches for his hand, and their fingers slide together and stay.

“Because,” Teemu begins again, “that was the moment you became too much to stand, and I had to, Paul, I don’t know what else to say.”

“You can’t just,” Paul tries again. “You’ve got to at least lead up to it a bit, give a guy some warning--” and why the hell, he wonders, is he arguing about this? They’re sitting with their heads bent close together, a little warm island in the endless sea of rumbling clockwork. Teemu’s eyes are bright with hope, and Paul completely understands the urgent need to tell him: _you are the best thing in my universe_.

It should feel like stepping off a cliff, when he kisses Teemu, but it doesn’t; it’s just the easy last step down from a staircase, with someone there to meet him.

Teemu won’t keep still, even in this. His kisses keep wandering over Paul’s cheeks, his chin, to the corner of his eye. There’s a knot at the base of his neck that’s slowly relaxing under Paul’s hand, as though--as though Teemu hadn’t been _sure_.

As if there’s any bit of Paul that isn’t already Teemu’s for the asking; as if, impossibly, Teemu doesn’t know that. He _should_ know. He needs to. “Thought you knew everything,” Paul says, more or less a non sequitur.

It must make _some_ kind of sense to Teemu, who just beams, hand settling against Paul’s cheek. “Not quite everything,” he says, and makes it sound like a promise. “Not yet.”

This time Paul fits his hand along Teemu’s jaw, holding him in place to be kissed; this time Teemu stays put for him, with soft eager noises that feel like they’ll crack Paul open right down the middle. He pushes at Teemu’s shoulder, pressing him back against the engine and folding forward into his lap.

Teemu lets go of his hand, but only so he can hook his arm around Paul’s waist. “Paul,” he breathes, “ _Paul,_ ” so openly amazed it’s nearly unbearable.

“That’s me,” says Paul, a bit in shock himself. “Hi.”

There are cool fingers sneaking up under his shirt, tracing his ribs, making him lightheaded. “You never told me if I did it right,” Teemu says, the next time Paul makes the mistake of letting him breathe. His lips are brushing Paul’s temple, and okay, Paul is definitely being made fun of now.

“Yeah,” he says, hiding a giddy smile in Teemu’s neck. “I think you’re getting the idea.”

“I’ll do better next time,” Teemu offers. “I can make an announcement, hang up banners, _hello, Paul, I’m going to kiss you next Tuesday, brace yourself--”_

“Oh my God,” says Paul, because it's impossible to keep making out with someone who’s making him laugh like this. “Would you _shut up._ ”

 

* * *

 

The next few weeks of Paul’s life are mostly a confusing blur. He’s 95% certain that Teemu isn’t capable of actually physically glowing, but it wouldn’t entirely surprise him right now, because--well, he knew neither of them were going into this casually, but Teemu has transcended his usual good cheer and is incandescent with joy. And if all it takes to make that happen is kissing him against every available surface in the TARDIS--it’s a tough sacrifice, but Paul is willing to keep making it.

He doesn’t know yet _how_ he’s going to keep this, but he trusts they can find a way. Paul’s already thrown more than enough of his heart into things with built-in expiration dates

All he knows is that he’s felt more settled here lately, with this out in the open to freely grow between them. That itch to prove something, to _earn_ a place where he already is, has eased. So at the moment he’s perfectly content to sit on what’s become his usual perch on the edge of the console while he watches Teemu work. (He could swear the bare patch there has grown over time, buttons and lights migrating away to make room for him to sit comfortably.) Teemu’s flitting madly around the console, narrating whatever he’s doing; Paul understands about a fifth of it. Teemu’s talking mainly to hear his own voice, but Paul’s half-listening mainly to hear Teemu’s voice, so that’s okay.

Every time Teemu passes within arm’s reach he leans in to steal a kiss, and every time he pulls away Paul smiles anew. He’s not usually someone who’s content to be at rest, but he’s almost perfectly content right here.

Almost.

“Hey,” he says eventually. “What you’re doing, it’s not urgent, right?” If nothing else, because he trusts that if it were an actual emergency Teemu would at least try to make sure Paul understood what was happening.

Teemu glances up, fingers pausing on the enmeshed dials he’s adjusting. “Important, of course. Urgent, not so much. Why?”

“So let it wait a bit,” Paul suggests, and reaches out hopefully. He has work of his own he wants to do.

He gets them turned around pretty quick--not that there’s much resistance. Teemu fits very nicely pinned between Paul and the edge of the console, bracing his weight back on one hand and sliding the other into Paul’s hair to keep him close while they kiss. Paul never sees him this settled in his own skin--this pliant and welcoming--for anything but this. It makes his head spin; he can’t get enough.

He didn’t mean to take this anywhere drastic, just a nice quiet exploratory interval, but he should’ve known better. Instead his teeth catch Teemu’s lip, and Teemu gasps and opens for him; instead Paul finds himself tugging restlessly at the buttons at Teemu’s throat, the soft linen of his shirt parting in favor of even softer skin over his collarbone. Teemu shifts backwards, grabbing at Paul’s ass to bring him along, as though Paul needed the encouragement.

His knees are spread, clamped around Paul’s hips, and when Paul squeezes his thigh--drags his hand up to squeeze again, dangerously high--Teemu moans outright, smothered where his lips are doing something maddening behind Paul’s ear. Then he’s tipping backwards, panting with his shirt half-open, and of course Paul is following him down, Teemu flinging out a hand to try and catch himself--

There’s a distinct _click,_ the floor lurches under them, and the engines stop dead.

“What,” says Paul after a moment; he needs another minute to put together an actual intelligent question. The jolt dropped him entirely on top of Teemu, whose boot heels are still digging into the backs of Paul’s thighs, whose hand is still idly working Paul’s t-shirt up his back.

Who is kissing him again, more gently but at length, delaying any coherent response even further.

“What the hell did you do,” Paul manages at last. It takes all the willpower he’s got to push himself upright, and even more to take an actual step back.

“What did _I_ do?” Teemu sits up and gives himself a shake, pushing his hair back out of his face. “It’s your--you were--” His hair is a wreck regardless; so is his _mouth_ , God, and his shirt, and--and Paul’s not going to look anywhere below that. Maybe it’s safer if he looks somewhere else entirely.

“You hit a button or something,” Paul says to the nearest wall, yanking his shirt back down over his chest.

“I wasn’t looking where my hand went,” says Teemu. He sounds gratifyingly dazed himself. “I was thinking about yours _._ ”

Paul sighs and focuses on what’s next to Teemu’s leg, which is at least a productive distraction.

“It’s all communications and scanners over there,” says Teemu, glancing over. He’s buttoned his shirt back up, thank God. “Nothing there should’ve done this.”

Paul pats his knee. He doesn’t remember putting his hand back on Teemu’s knee, but some things are inescapable, so he lets it stay there. “I don’t get it. If she can move the controls around to make room for me to sit, why couldn’t she--”

They both look up at the ceiling.

“If you don’t want us messing around on your console,” says Teemu, “there has to be a nicer way to get it across.”

The ensuing silence is remarkably guilty-sounding, considering that the TARDIS can’t talk to begin with. The engines conspicuously fail to start up again.

“In case you were wondering,” says Paul finally, “this is pretty much what having a little sister is like.”

*******

It’s fine, of course. Everything is fine. They work out that Teemu somehow triggered an emergency landing protocol, even though that lever usually lives on the opposite side of the console. The TARDIS needs a couple of hours to reboot from her tantrum, though, and in the meantime it’s getting chilly inside, so Paul and Teemu have to actually go outside.

Outside looks like a harmless picturesque farming colony, which means it probably won’t turn out to be harmless _or_ picturesque at all. Teemu locks the TARDIS door behind them and takes Paul’s hand, and Paul freezes reflexively, because _other people._ “Sorry,” says Teemu, with the faint hurt of someone who isn’t sure what they’re apologizing for, and lets go.

They’ve talked about this by now, because Paul had no choice but to explain--that this kind of thing could be dangerous on Earth, that he doesn’t _want_ the same rigid secrecy with Teemu, but it’s going to take time for him to unlearn it.

In public, nothing’s really even changed; Teemu’s been hauling him around by the hand since about five minutes after they met, so Paul can’t blame him for being confused. But it feels different now that it _means_ something. A lifetime of ground-in panic-- _people will see, people will know what I am_ \--keeps welling up, even here and now when there’s no need for it.

Paul just wants to make it stop. He’s not a particularly demonstrative person, and never will be, but Teemu amazes and delights him, every day; it’s not right, or fair, to be scared of telling him so.

He turns on the spot and kisses Teemu firmly, and the world doesn’t end. He feels like he’s crumbling into pieces, but kissing Teemu tends to feel like that anyway, and afterwards the outside world is still there. Teemu’s thumb is stroking Paul’s cheekbone. Nobody else cares, at least not on this planet.

“Are you okay?” says Teemu, after a moment.

“Working on it,” says Paul honestly, and takes his hand again. If his grip’s a little too tight--well, Teemu doesn’t complain, anyway.

 

* * *

 

“There was an incident in 3999,” Teemu is saying. “No games for a hundred and fifty years after that. No one would host them. So--neutral ground, ever since then.”

“An incident?” Paul tunes back in; he’s been mentally weighing the odds of this trip backfiring horribly against the discomfort of having to explain to Teemu _why_ it might backfire. He’s pretty sure he’d rather just risk it, although Teemu is so pleased with himself that Paul’s risk tolerance is probably wider than it would be otherwise. That seems to happen to him a lot these days.

“An attack.” Which clears up very little. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Why would you _say_ that?”

“It’s a major historical event! I think I’d know if any giant bugs were going to show up.” Teemu considers and then tips his hand back and forth. “I’m 98, 99% sure. No bugs. No explosions.”

Paul sighs, drops his forehead onto his folded arms, and tries to internally brace himself for the inevitable giant bugs and explosions. “You know,” he says after a moment, carefully level, “you don’t have to impress me, right? You can take me out for pizza, whatever, I’m still planning to put out when we get back at the end of the day.”

Probably not the most romantic moment in the world, but it’s more than worth it for the choking noise Teemu makes, fingers stumbling on the controls. “Well,” he says slowly. “I wanted something special for you, but if you’d rather just stay in--”

Paul feels a pang; he knows this is something Teemu’s really put planning into, for him. “Nah, you’re right. Go ahead and woo me a little more first.” And the odds really are pretty great that nothing at all will try to kill them, including Paul’s personal emotional baggage. “So is it the summer or winter games?”

*******

Apparently there isn’t actually much point in splitting up the Olympics, seeing as it’s the year 5264 and they’re being held in space. The arena is spherical--one half for cold-weather sports, the other half for warm. Each hemisphere seats about a hundred and fifty thousand people, with artificial gravity lensing artfully deployed to provide clear viewing from any height. They’re divided by a web of walkways, concessions stands, bathrooms, the usual, but if Paul looks up he can see a distant upside-down green smudge that must be grass. Or whatever they use instead of grass these days.

Also, as long as he keeps looking up he doesn’t have to think about what’s actually in front of him. Exploding giant bugs would probably have been more fun.

“Programs,” says Teemu briskly, sitting down next to him and handing one over.

Now is really, really the time to say something, but Paul is paralyzed. Something about the perfectly, sickeningly familiar smell of the arena, and the ease with which Teemu kisses him hello, when of course men don’t kiss each other like that in places smelling like this--

Paul takes a look at the program, because he doesn’t know what else to say. It’s a little square of thick plasticky paper, but in his hand it unfolds into a holographic display of near-encyclopedic thoroughness. There’s a full GIHF rulebook, which would probably make interesting reading, and a list of past medalists all the way back to the 1960s, and Paul’s supply of self-preservational instinct has been running low these days.

He’s genuinely interested to discover that the 2002 men’s gold medalists included (among others) Marty Borden, Chris Prang, Hayley Wickenheiser, and Steve Kariya. But the team photo is immutable and unmistakeable.

They’re myths here, him and Marty and Prongs and Wicks--and minor ones at that, as vague and distant as a naked Greek with a javelin. But here this all is, three thousand years later, so they must have done _something_ right.

He’s pretty sure Teemu doesn’t know what’s wrong. This is supposed to be a date, or as close to it as they’re ever likely to manage, not an exercise in self-flagellation. Paul should say something.

What comes out of his mouth is “They still use water ice,” because God, the smell--it may be nothing but ice and sweat, but it feels like it’s crawling under his skin to live there.

Teemu shrugs. “It’s the Olympics, you know? Apparently they’re very traditional about these things. Steel skates, water ice, not like the professional leagues. Even the padding’s mostly for show. Kinetically powered electrorepulsor fields, you could weave the circuitry into any clothing you like, but I guess people like to see the bulk.”

They’re seated right on the glass, or would be if there was any. No padding and no glass, like he’s gone back a hundred years instead of forward a few thousand.

Paul can’t help wondering despite himself what the pros have, if not steel and ice, but he’s sidetracked by the players materializing on the ice for warmups. It’s the bronze medal game, Earth vs. Europa--”very old rivalry, apparently,” Teemu confides. The players are a mix of genders and species on both sides, and Teemu’s right about the padding; they don’t even wear jerseys, just the token hollow shells of shoulder and shin pads, decorated elaborately in team colors.

It’s peculiarly unsurprising that there are _three_ Sutters playing for Earth, although they all appear to be different species. The program probably has an explanation for that.

A Europan checks one of her teammates into the boards--they’re laughing, nothing in it, but the air sparks dramatically where glass ought to be, lightning crackling out and up for a second to suggest a high dome shielding the entire rink. “See what I mean?” Teemu says, though he’s starting to look at Paul oddly, realizing that something’s awry. “The glass won’t fail, but it’s more fun if people believe it _could_.”

There is very little Paul has ever wanted more, or less, than to watch this game. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I just--need a minute,” drops the open program on his seat, and walks out.

It’s several minutes until Teemu comes and finds him, sitting against a wall in the least crowded corridor he could find--which is still pretty crowded. “So, ‘94 and ‘02?”

Paul stares at him a moment. He knows Teemu wouldn’t have done this on purpose, but still-- “You really didn’t know. Really?”

“Of course not.” Teemu sits down next to him, pressed side to side. “I just said, what hasn’t changed much since the 20th century? What would you recognize?”

“I can’t watch this,” Paul says, though that should be pretty obvious at this point. He feels sick. “I can’t--I’m sorry.”

“So are you finally going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“I can’t believe they mixed me up with my _brother_ ,” says Paul, but he manages a rueful smile for Teemu, because they both know that really isn’t what’s bothering him. Hell, good for Steve; if one Kariya’s managed to straggle this far down through the history books, Paul isn’t sure it still matters which. If anyone should be insulted it’s Wicks, for the suggestion she’d slum it with them. Comparatively speaking.

He’s got to give himself credit: the one and only time in his life he hasn’t faced something head-on, he’s gotten _really_ good at it. He’s skidding away from the thought even in his own head, and that means he’s run too far from it. Even Teemu isn’t dignifying him with a response.

“I can’t play again,” he says to his own folded hands--and just like that, spoken aloud, it’s true and permanent. Over.

“Your head,” says Teemu unnecessarily--but his hand is heavy on Paul’s knee, and it seems very necessary to take it and kiss Teemu’s knuckles.

“My doctors told me the day before I met you. My head’s too badly fucked, and if I get hit wrong again, or relapse on the ice--” Paul shakes his head. “You knew I wasn’t all right.”

“Of course I _knew_ ,” says Teemu, suddenly irritable. “How could I not? But you wouldn’t talk about it, like you wanted me to pretend I didn’t see you were in pain. All you had to say was, look, Teemu, you are the smartest man in the universe--”

Paul snorts, even though none of this is really funny at all.

“--we can go anywhere and anytime, surely you must be able to find me someone who knows something about human brains--”

“And then what would I do?” Paul demands, rather than asking the obvious question. If there’s a possibility, he knows damn well Teemu has already gone hunting for it, and is just waiting for him to ask. “Of course I thought about it. And then I go home, where everyone knows what’s wrong with me can’t be fixed? No doctor would clear me with my history. Hell, I wouldn’t trust one who did.”

“So what? Your heart is broken, so your head has to be too?”

“I don’t know,” says Paul honestly, because between feeling like this, or having his health back but still being pushed into early retirement for essentially no reason-- “I know that I have to call my sister and tell her, and then she’ll tell the press, and--” he wets his lips. “However long I stay out here, I’m still a professional player. Until I go home and make that call.”

Courage isn’t the right word for what he needs. Courage, as he’s always understood it, has to do with being afraid of something and doing it anyway, which he has plenty of experience with. Courage implies a choice, and Paul--Paul has no choices, only the opportunity to postpone the inevitable for as long as he can stand.

“I think I have to go home,” he concludes, and hastily adds, “not for _good_ , god,” because something terrible happens to Teemu’s face for half a second there. “Just to get this settled.”

*******

They’re back in the TARDIS, getting ready to leave, before Paul dares to ask: “You really didn’t know who I was?”

“I didn’t _snoop_ ,” says Teemu, hurt. Frankly that would probably be a first for him, in which case Paul should be honored. “But I guessed some--Paul, I didn’t know it was hockey, I swear.”

“I know.” Because Teemu can be pushy, often is, but never like that.

“I did think maybe some kind of athlete, though, because you looked _really_ good in that wetsuit.”

Paul laughs, cheeks warm, watching the control column lurch into motion as they dematerialize. "Oh, so I'm the eye candy, is that it?"

Teemu is sidling around the console like he thinks he's being sneaky; Paul saves them both some time and trouble by reaching to reel him in against his side. Instead of kissing him, though, Teemu props his chin on Paul's shoulder and stares for a moment in disconcerting silence. "I met you and I thought--this man is too good-looking to be this unhappy. I wanted to give you just one good thing. Just one smile from you, that’s all I was after."

"Then I guess you screwed up." Paul curls his fingers into Teemu's shirt, right at the small of his back.

"One wasn’t enough," Teemu says, still low, and Paul swallows. "You're so much more than I could have ever--"

"You have no idea what you give me," says Paul, and if it comes out sounding more bewildered than affectionate, it's because he honestly can't understand how Teemu apparently doesn’t know this.

Teemu does kiss him then, just the corner of his mouth. "You know it's going to go fine, right? You're going to be fine."

"I know." Paul glances at him sidelong. "Is this some kind of time travel knowledge, or--”

“Nah." Teemu shrugs. "I just know you."

 

* * *

 

The phone call sucks. The phone call sucks enormously, has always sucked as a monster looming ahead, was always going to suck no matter how long Paul put it off.

It sucks worst of all because he spends the last fifteen minutes of his NHL career sitting perfectly still in his kitchen, counting out even breaths, and it does him no good whatsoever. The moment his sister picks up the phone, Paul says “Michiko, _fuck_ ,” wrenched out of him and sounding far too much like a sob.

“Jesus.” Her alarm is clear, even over the phone. “What is it? Is something happening with UNIT?”

Paul suddenly misses her terribly--misses his whole family terribly--but he doesn’t know how to explain that he’s lived a year in the eight hours since he talked to her. He sure as hell doesn’t know how to explain that he’s seen their dad recently. “They’re still hanging around, but no, uh . It’s a work thing.”

“Okay,” she says, calmer but still wary. They don’t have many good _work things_ to talk about these days. “What’s up?”

Teemu’s sitting with him, holding his hand, trying his damnedest to be soothing and supportive and a Good Boyfriend. Paul finds suddenly, with a tinge of guilt, that he doesn’t want to be soothed or supported right now; he doesn’t want to pretend that this is any less painful than it is. He nudges Teemu away, trying not to make it seem personal. Teemu lets go and gets up, though not without a quick kiss to Paul’s hair before wandering away to pretend his attention is elsewhere.

Which is why, incongruously, he’s rummaging through Paul’s crisper when Paul manages to say “I got another scan yesterday and--I’m not getting back. There’s no way.”

He thinks of the Europan players again, knocking each other around easy and cheerful; then he’s crying for real, free hand pressed uselessly over his eyes while Teemu hovers awkwardly behind him.

After that, the conversation fades into a generally unpleasant haze; it takes over an hour, Michiko talking him patiently through paperwork, publicity bullshit, the bare bones of a statement for the press. Paul is grateful that she’s clearly thought this through in advance; he’s even more grateful that she never _told_ him she was preparing for the worst.

It’s barely even dinnertime by the time he finally hangs up, but he’s utterly wrung out and he’s lost track of what exactly Teemu’s been doing, fussing around the kitchen all this time. Teemu clears this up by setting a plate in front of him with a large complicated sandwich.

Paul lifts a slice of bread. At first glance he can identify tuna salad, peanut butter, and hot sauce. “Thanks,” he says, and means it, but he doesn’t bother with a second glance.

“Not quite right?” There’s a sheepish twist to Teemu’s mouth that suggest he might be purposely going for a laugh; it’s difficult to tell with him sometimes, and Paul’s too tired to effectively judge. Either way, Teemu’s trying--and Paul is blindsided with a brief wash of fury at himself.

“I loved it,” he says dully. “Hockey. I still love it, it was my whole life for thirty years and it isn’t fucking fair, Teemu--it isn’t fair that I lose a thing like that, and because I lost it I get to keep _you_. It doesn’t seem right--this horrible thing is happening, I shouldn’t get _happiness_ out of it, I shouldn’t get something this good--”

Teemu sits down next to him; Paul turns towards him, reflexively, and Teemu’s hands settle on both Paul’s shoulders, stilling their trembling. He hadn’t realized he _was_ shaking. “What do you need from me?”

“I don’t know right now,” Paul admits. “I don’t--I can’t--” Factually speaking he knows he’ll snap out of this, but right now he can’t imagine doing _anything_ ; he can’t think even a minute ahead, let alone decide what he wants Teemu to be doing. “I’m sorry.”

Teemu’s hands slide up to frame his face for a moment before falling away. “I’ll be around, okay? In the house, in the TARDIS--I won’t go anywhere. Just let me know.”

Between them they manage, somehow, to scrounge up viable food and eat it. Dinner calms Paul down a little, but he still appreciates the breathing room when Teemu goes back outside to do--whatever the hell it is he’s going to be doing in the TARDIS. The occasional helicopter passes overhead, and Paul gets annoyed every time; later, when they stop, it seems too quiet.

What he really wants is for Teemu to come back later, so that Paul doesn’t have to fall asleep alone. But he still can’t quite bring himself to ask for comfort, today of all days when it still feels like he _should_ be unhappy in all possible ways. Instead he goes to bed by himself--his own bed feels unfamiliar and new. It takes forever to fall asleep, but when he does it’s heavy and thankfully dreamless.

*******

When he wakes up in the morning, Teemu is there anyway. Stranger still, Teemu is still sound asleep, plastered up against Paul’s back, arm heavy over his waist, and--to Paul’s momentary delight--snoring intermittently against the back of his neck. Teemu only sleeps about four hours a night, five at best, so he must have been up pretty late, even after--

“Oh, God,” says Paul in feeble horror, and squirms reluctantly free so that he can brush his teeth and shower and contemplate just how badly he melted down last night.

The next step would logically be food, but he isn’t especially hungry. Instead he settles for making coffee and bringing it back to the bedroom, where the smell rouses Teemu almost immediately. “Morning,” he says drowsily, struggling briefly to sit up in bed.

Paul takes a moment to properly appreciate the sight--it’s so rare to catch Teemu in the fifteen entire seconds between asleep and fully awake. He’s appropriated an old Preds t-shirt to sleep in; it makes him look hilariously ordinary and human, and it may not be possible to die of sheer fondness, but by God, Paul is trying his best. “Good morning,” he says finally, pulling himself together and sitting down on the edge of the bed to hand the cup over.

“You look better,” says Teemu, between gulps of coffee, and squeezes Paul’s knee.

“I feel better.” He really does; still hollowed out and off-kilter, but nothing at all like last night’s state of shock. “I’m sorry, did I--did I try to put you in the guest room last night?”

“You tried,” Teemu says pointedly. “Lucky for you I’m nicer to you than you are.”

Paul sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I knew it was going to hit me hard, but not like that.”

“I don’t _blame_ you--” Teemu begins, like that’d be absurd, which it would be, but Paul nudges him silent.

“I used to think a lot about bringing you back to Earth,” he admits. “What I could even show you here that’d measure up to the kind of places you take me, you know? Last night wasn’t exactly how I would’ve wanted to start off.”

“Well, there’s plenty of time still.” Teemu leans forward attentively. “Where were you thinking?”

“Actually--” Paul braces one hand on the bed, between Teemu’s knees. “I’d be good with staying in today.” The outside world probably wants things from him, but he’s not interested in finding out about it any sooner than he absolutely has to.

“Smooth,” says Teemu, but he’s grinning as he sets his half-finished coffee aside. “Very smooth.”

“I try,” says Paul; Teemu’s already reaching to pull him closer, so presumably he’s said as much as he needs. He settles astride Teemu’s thighs--presses his hands to Teemu’s chest, just to remind himself of the flutter of heartbeats there--kisses him lightly once, twice, making him chase it.

“ _Paul_ ,” says Teemu, fingers clenching on his shoulders. “Come on, come here.”

Paul pulls his own shirt off, craving contact too badly to wait for Teemu to do it for him; then he lets himself be hauled in close. “Your waist feels weird,” he says absently, when he can tear his mouth away for long enough.

Teemu hums vaguely, either in acknowledgement or just approval of Paul’s hands wandering up under his shirt. “Maybe _your_ waist feels weird,” he suggests.

“No, but really, let me--” Paul tugs hopefully and Teemu curls up towards him, letting Paul strip the borrowed shirt over his head, at which point Paul loses his train of thought for a minute. He braces one hand in the pillows by Teemu’s head and slides the other up his side, just taking in the view.

“Well?” Teemu demands, stretching his arms deliberately and obscenely over his head. “Do I look weird, too?” He’s breathless but his skin is still cool under Paul’s hands, and maybe it should be weirder, doing this with someone whose body temperature is so low. It should be, but Paul’s already used to it from months of affectionate manhandling; it’s just Teemu, just how he is, and everywhere they touch feels like Paul is burning even hotter in contrast.

He shakes his head in response and keeps exploring, gets briefly diverted by discovering a ticklish spot, walks his fingers down--ah. “It’s your ribs, you’ve got an extra pair of ribs.” And no navel. It’s all useless information but he loves this, cataloging all the little differences between their bodies.

Teemu laughs. “So what if I have extra ribs? Does it matter?”

“Of course--mmm.” Paul rolls his hips against Teemu’s, just because he can, and because Teemu’s eyes are starting to glaze over. “Means I’m probably more flexible than you.”

“We’ll see about that.” Teemu tilts his head, inviting, and Paul leans down to kiss him a while longer. They’re kissing like drowning men, and yet Teemu’s hands are devastatingly gentle and _everywhere_ \--in Paul’s hair, the small of his back, drifting up his arm, fingers trailing down the side of his neck and making him shiver.

They’re starting to slip into a rhythm, rocking together lazily. Teemu is murmuring indistinctly into the crook of Paul’s neck; Teemu’s thumb is in the crease of his hip, rubbing circles downward, and Paul is extremely aware of his waistband slipping down on that side as if by accident. “Teemu,” he says roughly, letting Teemu’s other hand tilt his jaw so that his mouth can work down Paul’s throat. “Teemu, oh.”

Teemu shushes him, kissing his leisurely way along Paul’s collarbone. His thighs are shifting restlessly under the covers, pushing Paul’s legs further open.

Paul catches the hand on his jaw and kisses Teemu’s wrist, then his knuckles, and then sucks gently at his fingertips. The fingers on his hip slide lower, squeezing; Paul gasps, and Teemu’s fingers push further into his mouth. It only seems right to suck harder at them, so that Teemu chokes and lifts his head to watch. Paul feels ridiculous suddenly, spread open and exposed, but he closes his eyes and lets his tongue work over Teemu’s fingers for a moment, trying to make it look good.

“Oh,” says Teemu, freeing his fingers so both his hands can get a grip on the backs of Paul’s thighs. “Oh, that is _not fair_ ,” and wrestles Paul over onto his back.

Paul laughs and props himself up on his elbows, trying to catch his breath. Teemu settles between his legs and kisses his stomach, then his hipbone, with unmistakable intent. “God,” says Paul, with a horribly obvious crack in it. “You-yeah, that, please.”

Which is when they both realize that the covers are hopelessly tangled around his legs.

It’s entertaining, at least, watching Teemu struggle for a minute; Paul can’t do much for himself besides try to push his trapped sweatpants off, and the drag of fabric against his dick is only making him more frustrated. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one around here.”

“I can _leave you_ like this,” says Teemu, and promptly gives the lie to his own words by somehow making the covers and Paul’s pants go away simultaneously. “You look--” Teemu begins in a very different tone, presses his face into Paul’s thigh, and takes a minute sucking an enthusiastic kiss there.

Paul chokes on a groan; there’s no way that’s not going to bruise. “Hi,” he says mindlessly, and reaches down to play with Teemu’s hair.

“Spectacular,” says Teemu at last, “you look perfect,” but he still takes his sweet goddamn time getting to where he’s clearly going. For a while he just explores, mouth working over every inch of Paul’s stomach and thighs and yet somehow, miraculously, never so much as brushing up against his dick. He hums thoughtfully over the surgical scars on Paul’s hips but doesn’t ask--just kisses them all in turn, bites at the last one to make Paul squirm.

“Teemu--” Paul chokes, heart clenching, and throws his arm over his face; it’s too much.

“Shh,” says Teemu, nuzzling into the crease of his hip, “I’ve got you, I’m here,” and at last is kind enough to press a kiss to the base of his cock.

Paul’s hips jerk involuntarily; he moans in surprise, a sharp shocked noise he’s never heard from himself before. “Fuck,” he blurts, grabbing at the sheets to keep from pulling Teemu’s hair. “Are you going to suck it, or--”

“Is that what you’re supposed to do with it?” says Teemu, all innocence. “You have to tell me these things, Paul, I’m not human, remember?”

Paul lifts his arm for a moment to glare down at him. “You still _have one_ ,” he says, too turned on to be a smartass about it. It may be a long time since he last hooked up with anyone else with a dick, but he knows the feeling of someone else’s erection through their clothes, and he’s had more than enough opportunity in the past few weeks to get familiar with Teemu’s.

“Mmm, fine,” says Teemu. He leans up to take just the tip of Paul’s dick into his mouth, gives it one agonizingly slow thoughtful suck, and then swallows him down whole.

Paul _sobs_ , back arching, grinding his hips down into the mattress in a desperate bid not to fuck up into Teemu’s mouth instead. Then Teemu’s hands are there, pinning him firmly, letting him relax into the mounting heat. He thinks he might be making a lot of noise, choking back moans that are increasingly sharp and frantic, but Teemu just keeps working at him, nothing fancy but steady and inescapable, even though he’s groaning softly himself and his weight is shifting restlessly between Paul’s legs. “I’m,” Paul croaks, embarrassingly soon, but it’s half-muffled where he’s pressed his face against his own arm. “Please, oh, God, I’m gonna--” but Teemu goes nowhere, changes nothing, and Paul scrabbles uselessly at the sheets as one last swallow drags him over the edge.

He’s brought back to himself, after a bit, by one last gentle bite to his hip. “Amazing,” Teemu declares. His voice is ragged--from what he just did, or from how much he enjoyed it, or both.

“Yeah,” says Paul, before his brain can come back online and stop him. “Yeah, you are, c’mere.” Teemu groans, more affectionate than exasperated, and slides back up into his arms, kissing him messily while Paul fumbles to get Teemu’s underwear out of the way.

But Teemu is grinding down against his thigh, pressing where Paul’s still too sensitive, and once Paul gets him naked he has to roll them over and curl up against Teemu’s side instead. “C’mon,” says Teemu, beautifully hoarse. “I just need--Paul, come _on--_ ” so Paul slides a hand down his stomach, and finds that Time Lord dick is close enough to human that a handjob will work just fine.

“I’ll be more thorough next time,” Paul promises, mouthing sloppily at Teemu’s neck. “I want to know everything, God, you look so good.”

Teemu twists to kiss him, gasping between their mouths, one foot planted to fuck up shamelessly into Paul's hand; it’s a hell of a show. Paul could watch this happen forever, but it doesn’t take long until Teemu jolts up and comes with a shout that sounds almost surprised, curling in on himself, towards Paul.

Paul wipes his hand on the sheet and pulls Teemu in close, rubbing at his hip. “Good?”

Teemu hums agreeably against Paul’s collarbone, but after a minute he mumbles “Ugh, too warm,” and shoves reluctantly at Paul, who shifts away as little as possible and turns onto his stomach.

He can’t look away from Teemu, sprawled out and panting next to him; he can’t help reaching over to run his knuckles over Teemu’s arm, his shoulder, his collarbone, just to watch the satisfied grin spread over his face. Paul’s seen him in the light of dozens of suns, intends to see him under many, many more, and has never loved him one bit less regardless of the lighting. But there’s something in particular about seeing him here, in Earth’s own sunlight, and if Paul can’t have everything he wants in life--not all at once, anyway--this could be enough. More than enough.

“Never mind,” says Teemu after a minute, when he’s gotten his breath back. “I miss you already. Come back,” and rolls over with a groan to collapse bonelessly over Paul’s back.

“Well, I’m sure not going anywhere _now._ ” Paul squirms, but only enough to get comfortable. It’s honestly pretty nice, being pinned like this--Teemu nosing at the nape of his neck, nudging a knee between Paul’s, sliding a hand up Paul’s arm to clasp his hand.

He could take this thought somewhere, maybe, but it’s too soon and he’s sleepy; he thinks even Teemu is dozing off, at least for the moment. Maybe later.

“Can you believe,” Paul says, muffled in his pillow, “i just met you yesterday morning? We’ve known each other one day.”

“Been a pretty good day,” Teemu mumbles, and squeezes his hand.

*******-

The following several days are maybe the weirdest of Paul’s life, despite having spent the past nearly-a-year traveling around in a fucking time machine. He spends more time than he’d like dealing with the media, the league, Michiko, the rest of his family, his doctors, the Blues’ team doctors, the Blues’ front office, like being trapped on some kind of hideous merry-go-round where everyone won’t stop telling him how _sorry_ they are.

He takes a couple of mornings to go surfing, because that’s something even the TARDIS couldn’t simulate for him, and it never felt quite right on any other planet. But everyone else he knows also wants to tell him they’re sorry, unless he’s actively riding a wave at the moment. So that meat grinder takes up half his time.

Pretty much the other half is spent in bed with Teemu. It’s not a distraction per se--he hopes not, that wouldn’t be fair to them--it’s more that he wants to ring in the new with all the same energy he’s using up on ringing out the old. This is the kind of emotional whiplash that’s bound to catch up with him sooner or later, but Paul’s going to deal with that whenever it hits.

They’ve been on Earth a solid week when Paul says, over the remains of breakfast, “There’s something you’re just dying to tell me, isn’t there?”

Teemu glances up at him, suddenly shifty. “What did you say this fruit was called? It’s amazing.”

“It’s a pear. Not my favorite myself, but--” Paul catches himself getting distracted by Teemu licking the juice off his fingers and looks away; then he remembers he doesn’t _have_ to catch himself any more, and takes a moment to enjoy the view after all.

Teemu smiles at him around the finger still in his mouth; it’d be a much smoother move if he wasn’t also waggling his eyebrows like mad.

Paul laughs, ducking his head to grin down at the counter. He almost regrets bringing up the question--almost. “Teemu,” he prods. “What do you know?”

Teemu’s smile vanishes pretty quick. “There’s nothing I know of that can repair a human brain. Nothing anyone knows of. _But._ ”

“But?”

Teemu picks up his pear core, twirling it around by the stem. “You remember, we saw those hockey players, none of them needed helmets?”

“I remember.” Like the rest of their gear the helmets had been mainly decorative, thin plastic shells with only a glimmer of energy protecting the face. “You said something about force fields, right?”

“Right, but those can’t keep the brain from--well.” Teemu gives the pear an illustrative shake and the stem breaks off, core dropping onto his plate. He startles; Paul grimaces. “So species that don’t heal, like you, they need something more.”

Paul nods. “Okay, what’s your point?”

“Well, other species’ brains _can_ heal! They have redundancies. So if you take a bit of tissue from the right species of brain, some nanobiotech to control it and store memory, you graft them over a human brain and after that any injuries, they heal same as a cut or bruise does. Like a safety net for your brain. Athletes, soldiers, in a thousand years anyone with a dangerous job will have to get it done.”

“That’s great,” says Paul, and tries to sound like he means it. “But I’m from _now_ , and the damage is already done.”

“I know.” Teemu lifts Paul’s chin with a finger, forcing him to look up. “This is how you make sure, no matter what, it doesn’t get worse.”

Paul stares for a minute, finally getting it, before he gulps down the lump in his throat and remembers to breathe. “It--it could do that for me, huh.”

Teemu nods, completely solemn. His hand slides gently over Paul’s hair, cupping the base of his skull.

Paul tips his head back into the touch. “I don’t know,” he says, after a moment. “That’s incredible, but I’ve met Cybermen, you know? I don’t know if I want circuits, whatever, in my brain.” But, God, it’s so tempting; it would be such a weight off his back.

Teemu shakes his head. “It’s nothing like that. Totally safe. At least hear me out? I can get what you need, you don’t have to decide yet.”

“I’m not promising anything, but--okay.” Paul nods. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“You didn’t ask. You _refused_ to ask. And--what I’d need to do, to get this for you, I can’t do without you knowing. And I promise you’re going to be difficult about it.” Teemu’s thumb brushes Paul’s ear, curls against his temple.

Paul is still numb with the possibilities in front of him, but the small touch is helping him settle back into himself. “Try me.”

“Habitual time travel--it alters the brain, biochemistry, things like that. Gallifreyans evolved for it, on a planet exposed to the Vortex--the TARDIS made a few adjustments to you when you came aboard. There are dozens of species whose neural tissue is close enough to human that they can usually be used for this. But none of them would match yours.”

“Okay, so what--” Paul hesitates and gets it, suddenly. “No. No way in hell.”

“It’s the only way,” says Teemu. “I need to get you a sample of raw Gallifreyan neural tissue. Nothing else will work.”

“You told me you _can’t_ go home. You’re a fugitive, right?” Paul shakes his head. “I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” says Teemu, irritatingly reasonable. “You can call it me being selfish, if you like. It’s for my own peace of mind.”

First signing in Colorado, and now this; Paul likes to think he’s very rarely selfish, but no one can claim that he doesn’t go all in when it happens. “All right. If we do this, what do we do?”

“You,” says Teemu firmly, “are staying here.”

Paul sits up straight, dislodging Teemu’s hand. “Like hell I am.”

“See, I knew you’d be difficult about it. Paul, I can’t take you to Gallifrey. I can’t.” Teemu sounds genuinely pained. “I’m not even supposed to _know_ you. If they got at you they’d separate us, like--like punishing me by taking away a pet. And trust me, if they want to they can make it so I’d never get you back.”

“And what,” says Paul, jaw tight, “will they do to you? If this goes wrong.”

“Nothing like that. Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Teemu.”

“Forced regeneration,” Teemu admits, after a noticeable pause. “That’s what capital punishment is, there, just one death and the change after it. And stealing a TARDIS is a capital crime.”

Paul feels suddenly sick. “No,” he says. “Absolutely not, you don’t--not for me. No.”

“Only one death, Paul, out of thirteen, to keep you safe forever.” Teemu is staring back at him in--challenge, almost; he clearly means it when he says he’s been thinking about this a long time. “I can do this for you. Let me do this.”

“I know I can’t really throw stones here.” Paul drops his gaze to his hands, folded on the counter. “But your planet sucks.”

Because this is, after all, for him; because surely it’s safer for two people to go. Because, if nothing else, he’s been intensely curious to see Gallifrey, a world where an entire race’s worth of warmth and curiosity and delight was poured into a few people and the rest were left with none.

“I left, didn’t I?” Teemu takes a breath like he’s going to say something more, but he doesn’t, only covers Paul’s hands with one of his own.

Paul unequivocally refuses to give up Teemu, or the weird little life they’ve been living together, and it’s a while now since he’s been looking for a magic fix. But the universe is full of very bright lights, and very loud noises, and bad guys just waiting to crack him over the head. This life could be taken away by any of those, just as easily as his old life was, and he’s being offered a way to protect it. He hates that he’s considering this; he hates that one of the frankly terrible options in front of him seems significantly less terrible.

“Here’s the thing,” he says. “It’s nice of you to ask me about this, but if I tell you it’s not worth the risk, we both know you’re just going to brood about it forever.”

“I don’t _brood_ ,” says Teemu, and then snaps his mouth shut before he can tell any other tragically obvious lies.

“So here’s what’s _not_ going to happen,” Paul goes on, ignoring him. “I am _not_ sitting around here on my ass while you stick your neck out for me. If you go, we both go. Does that answer your question?”

“I stole an entire TARDIS!” says Teemu encouragingly. “This is just a little sample in a box. It’s really nothing to worry about at all. You won’t even miss me.”

“Stop _saying that_ ,” says Paul, almost by rote these days--but he knows it’s just Teemu being a dick, and it wrings a brief smile from him all the same.

 

* * *

 

They work out a sort of compromise, which Paul hates even though it’s actually the most sensible way to handle the situation. The compromise is that they land, Teemu leaves the Tardis and does what he needs to do, and Paul stays behind, way down in a half-formed spare console room deep inside the TARDIS.

The reason it’s sensible is also the reason Paul hates it, which is: he’s watching everything outside on a monitor. He’s watching on a monitor when Teemu comes running back down the hallway, carrying his coat and a metal case with guards in pursuit. He’s watching as Teemu fumbles the TARDIS door open, drops his cargo inside--and turns sheepishly to face the approaching guards, hands up. He’s still watching when the TARDIS door slams shut on its own and the engines grind to life.

“No,” says Paul, and runs. “No, no, don’t--” The engines are laboring horribly as he sprints down the hallway; the lights flicker, and a bell starts to toll in panic deep below his feet. Someone on Gallifrey is trying to stop them from leaving.

The engine noise settles by the time he reaches the main console room--as do the lights, but at half-level. The Vortex is whirling above his head, so they must have made it out, despite someone’s best efforts.

There’s a weird smell in the air, like the sick smell that lodges in Paul’s nostrils when he’s coming down with a cold. Teemu’s coat is in a heap just inside the door, and it’d be eerily calm except for the bell still booming out from the bowels of the ship somewhere. Paul can sympathize, but he grimaces at the answering ring in his ears. “Could you please--could you not?”

The bell tolls once more and then mercifully shuts up. Paul shakes his head clear and lets out a long breath.

This is the part of the plan--in hindsight, the word _plan_ may have been overly generous--this is the part he hated the most. This was the entire point, that if something happened to Teemu they could get away and have space to think of something. But Paul left him, he’s _left him_ , and no amount of common sense can stop his impending nausea at the thought.

“Okay, baby,” he says more gently; it seems natural, for a moment, to give her the endearment Teemu normally would. The console is warm and humming when he curls his hands over the edge. For all the time Paul’s put into trying to learn these controls, he still only recognizes the most basic fraction of them.

It’s going to have to be enough.

“What exactly just happened? No, never mind--” The TARDIS likes him fine, Paul’s pretty sure, but he doesn’t think they can communicate well enough to have that conversation. “What do we _do?”_

The TARDIS does her best to explain anyway, but she’s incapable of verbal communication, and not too strong on linear narratives either. Her first effort is a blast of information from every screen, readout, and speaker in the room that lasts a few seconds at most and makes Paul so dizzy he almost throws up.

“Right,” he says after a minute, peering through his fingers. One of the screens is showing an EEG readout, but god knows whose; another is showing soundless video footage of a boy in a kilt with a sword, for reasons beyond Paul’s understanding. A heap of ticker tape has spilled onto the floor out of a telegraph he didn’t even know they had. “Maybe a bit at a time.”

*******

They end up drifting through the Vortex for over a week while Paul learns to play charades with a sentient eleven-dimensional mathematical construct, and also gives himself a crash course in classical Time Lord architecture. He doesn’t leave the library much; the TARDIS feels like too much without Teemu there. She’s Teemu’s space-- _theirs_ now, maybe, but not Paul’s alone.

There’s a nice comfortable little cot in the library now, because she’s given him one, and without the extra space he can almost fall asleep at night without feeling the gaping absence next to him. Almost.

Not really, but it’s a nice thought.

“Would you know?” he asks once. “If he’d, what, regenerated, if they’ve done something to him?”

If the TARDIS has an answer for that one, she doesn’t share in any way he can understand. Then again, her attention isn’t always with him; it took something out of her, fighting her way off Gallifrey. Paul doesn’t really understand it, only that she’s badly shaken up and has work of her own to do to pull herself together.

In the meantime, this is what she and the books in her library _can_ tell him: the entire planet of Gallifrey is protected by something called a transduction barrier, which blocks unauthorized TARDISes from materializing and destroys pretty much anything else on contact. The Citadel of the Time Lords, at the center of the planet’s capital city, is patrolled by armed guards with guns powerful enough to obliterate a Time Lord past the hope of regeneration. There are parts of the Citadel the guards won’t go into, but only because they’re--haunted, or full of monsters or something, Paul is unclear on that point.

If there are guards there must be a prison or detention facilities of some kind, but it’s ominously difficult to find out anything about them. It seems like the Time Lords’ justice system tends more to the medieval in its sentencing--torture, forced regeneration or the stripping of regenerative ability, exile to the desert outside the city or off the planet altogether, outright vaporization. Also an uncomfortable tendency to extend punishment to the accused’s TARDIS and loved ones; Teemu wasn’t joking about that.

In fact, Paul has a pretty good idea now of what would happen to _him_ , as collateral damage when the Time Lord justice system grinds Teemu up and spits him out. He’s not letting that information give him any pause, but he prefers not to dwell on it, all the same.

All in all, it all sounds very pleasant and welcoming. “Still can’t be harder to sneak out of than Madison Square Garden,” Paul reasons aloud, and gets to work.

*******

The TARDIS doesn’t seem to like his plan, but then Paul wouldn’t either in her place. Hell, he’s not sure he likes it anyway.

“I won’t let them touch you, okay?” he promises her. “You can seal the doors after me. I don’t want to be there any longer than I have to, believe me.”

She must believe him, because she drops out of the Vortex with a shudder, as low above Gallifrey as the barrier allows. Her engines whirr into silence; the lights, already gone dark everywhere else in the ship, start to dim. It makes Paul’s stomach twist uncomfortably, and he’s the one who _suggested_ this.

“It’ll be okay,” he says again, patting the console, and hopes she can’t tell he’s anything less than certain of it.

The TARDIS bumps gently up against the transduction barrier--once, twice, as if by accident, just enough to get the attention of whoever’s at the controls. The impacts jar through her, without her usual dampers and such in place, and Paul flinches in sympathy.

Then the lights go out with a final sigh, and he sits down in the dark to wait.

Squeaky, lurking patiently below the console, hops up to sit on Paul’s knee and wait with him. What minimal life support is still running sounds like breathing around him; everything else is silent.

Either it takes someone a while to notice he’s there, or there’s some debate about what to do about it. It feels like five or ten minutes that Paul sits there in the dark before the TARDIS jerks back into motion, and another few minutes of the ship shaking around him as they’re towed in. At last they land with an oddly hollow _clunk_ , nothing like the usual feeling when she lands under her own power.

Paul has no way of knowing how long it’ll take for someone to come investigate in person, so he doesn’t waste any time slipping out the door and locking it, Squeaky skittering along behind him. The TARDIS has reverted to a featureless white cube; he gives her one last quick pat before turning away, although he doesn’t know whether she can tell.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think he’d landed in the strangest junkyard he’s ever seen. The cavern is dimly and patchily lit, brick vaulting on the nearest wall arcing upward out of sight. There may not even be a ceiling to it, because Paul can make out the shadow of a skyscraper in the distance, tilted and crumbling. The wrecks of TARDISes mimicking everything from airplanes to end tables are all piled up here, dead or dying.

Luckily the entrance is clearly in view--all the better for whoever’s going to come down here and investigate. Paul picks his way through the rubble and out into the hallway--similarly grim stone architecture, but at least empty and better-lit.

He pauses in the hallway and crouches down to give Squeaky the TARDIS key. “Hey, hang on to this for me, okay? You know what I need you to do?”

The droid chirps back at him.

“Okay, good, of course you do.” Paul pats it. “And look, if this goes to shit--you look after him first.”

Squeaky lets out a harsh buzz, an unmistakable error message.

“No,” says Paul. “I mean it. Now go do what you gotta do.”

After they split up, it doesn’t take much exploration to find detention cells--the bad news is that they’re all empty. No one’s even bothered to leave a guard; in fact the entire place seems almost offensively primitive considering who built it. No force fields or alarms that Paul can spot--only stone walls and thick wooden doors, each armored with multiple heavy metal locks. It seems like there should be a trick to it.

Paul worries at the possibilities. Teemu could be somewhere else. He could be too late--and then he spots a discarded metal tray, gleaming on the floor in one of the cells. _Someone_ was kept in there recently.

The only windows he sees down here are in the ceilings, one grubby square of glass in each cell. Heading upward seems like the best option--if not the only option--so up Paul goes, on the first stairs he finds.

And up, and up, and up.

There are no landings or doors. There are windows, looking out over a shining golden city--it’s a stunning view, but Paul can’t let himself be distracted by it right now. He wonders, again, why a society millions of years old couldn’t have installed something resembling an elevator.

The chamber at the top of the stairs appears so suddenly that the burst of noise from the other side almost startles him into losing his footing. There’s no door, only a gaping arch, and Paul sidles through.

Most of the people inside appear to be turned away from the doorway, including the pair of guards in capes and helmets standing a few yards away, supervised in turn by a third in more elaborate armor. The Castellan Guards, Paul knows, and the Castellan himself; but he doesn’t pay them as much mind as he should, because the next thing he spots is Teemu, standing alone in the middle of the floor. He looks exasperated; actually, he looks a little bored.

Paul tears his gaze away to look up, and this time the view hits him so hard that he completely fails to pay attention to whatever’s actually happening in here. The chamber is vast and hexagonally shaped, with greenish walls stretching up all the way out of sight into a haze of warm reddish-brown sunlight. The seating extends up out of sight, too, but it’s all empty and left in shadow. Only a handful of ornately robed Time Lords sit in a row along a dais at the bottom of the chamber, trying unsuccessfully to stare Teemu down.

“Reckless,” one of them is saying. “Negligent. The power and wisdom granted a Time Lord is a heavy responsibility, not a plaything. We counted you little loss when you ran from that burden--but to further insult us, by returning to do it again? And for such a trivial purpose?”

She’s still going on about it when Teemu’s attention happens to wander and fall on the corner where Paul’s tucked himself away. Their eyes meet; Teemu brightens for a moment, mouth open in obvious astonishment, and oh, Paul’s still scared shitless, but for the first time in weeks he can _breathe_ again.

A part of him wants to just sit here and _look_ , but Teemu isn’t a subtle person at the best of times, and people are going to start wondering just what he’s staring at over here.

Paul taps the side of his nose, waits for Teemu’s tiny nod of acknowledgement, and takes a step back out of sight towards the doorway.

“Take him back to his cell while we determine sentencing,” the judge is saying. Paul curses and runs for it.

He makes it back down there just in time to cram himself back into a corner by the door before the guards shove Teemu in and slam it shut. They don’t bother to look inside--why would they--but Paul doesn’t hear them leave, either. Then again, it’s a thick door, and who knows how much sound carries through it?

“Hey.” It comes out a hoarse whisper, half because of the guards but half because Paul’s throat has all but closed up. “Are you okay?”

“Paul!” Teemu turns on his heel in surprise. “I’m fine, I--what are you doing here?”

Paul chokes down a laugh of sheer relief, holding on to him for dear life. He doesn’t remember actually crossing the room. “You asshole,” he breathes into Teemu’s shirt collar. “You fucking asshole, you promised I wouldn’t miss you.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Teemu says again, sounding bewildered. He kisses Paul’s ear, his cheek, and Paul lifts his head long enough to kiss him properly, quick and hard.

They aren’t out of here yet. He needs to pull himself together, just for a little longer, and instead he feels like he’s about to shake apart.

“So this is nice,” Teemu goes on, bumping their foreheads together. “Certainly much nicer being locked up with you than alone. But I don’t see--”

“Hey,” says Paul, through the lump still in his throat. “Have a little faith, would you,” and that, conveniently, is when something explodes in another cell down the hall, where Squeaky’s just set off a small charge. There’s a lot of shouting outside suddenly, and people running by--including, unmistakably, the sound of two guards running away from outside the cell door.

"That was hot," Teemu whispers in wide-eyed glee, "do it again," and kisses Paul's shoulder through his shirt.

“What, blow something up? I hate to break it to you, I’m not a pyrokinetic--”

“Say _pyrokinetic_ again,” Teemu suggests, “that’s hot too.” Paul slaps a hand over his mouth, but Teemu’s eyes are still gleaming.

“Let’s go,” he says after a moment, when the commotion seems to have receded. He has to mostly disentangle from Teemu, which is not ideal, but it’s worth it for the satisfaction of pulling the door open with ease. “I told you you should carry a first aid kit,” says Paul, not a little smugly, and yanks off the strip of bandage that stopped the lock from sliding home.

Teemu kisses him again, which is great, and also the worst timing imaginable.

“Ten minutes,” Paul promises, and hauls him out by the hand.

They make it three minutes before the guards catch up with them and, a minute later, the Castellan, looking disgustingly pleased with himself. “Ah. Teemulannesegornamoren.”

“What,” says Teemu, and rolls his eyes. One of the guards grabs his arms, cuffing his wrists behind his back; Paul feels a rough yank to his shoulder as the same is done to him.

The Castellan sniffs. “I’m pleased to inform you that you’ve been found guilty of the crime of interfering with the timeline of a lesser species--”

“Oh,” Paul mutters, “is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

His heart isn’t in it, but it still gets Teemu to choke off a laugh.

“--use of fraudulent security clearances, theft of protected technology, that is to say a TARDIS, a Time Ring, genetic material, irreversible protocol corruption of said TARDIS--”

“ _Irreversible corruption!_ ” Teemu parrots, outraged.

“--in view of your youth and known history of emotional instability, you have _mercifully_ been sentenced according to only the most severe of your offenses, the unauthorized use of a TARDIS. The vessel will be decommissioned, your human--companion--sent home and relieved of all anachronistic knowledge that might pollute the history of his homeworld--”

“You leave her the hell alone,” says Paul sharply, at the same moment Teemu says “You leave them _alone_ ,” and they stare at each other for a moment.

“--and you will be subject to immediate controlled regeneration, and exiled into the Drylands, as it’s amply clear you have nothing of value to contribute here.”

Paul almost swallows his tongue holding back a dozen indignant responses; he’s shaking with the effort of not fighting back, but it wouldn’t do Teemu any good; it wouldn’t do any of them any good. Then the guard at his shoulder tugs on his arm again--trying to lead him away--and his wits snap back into place, and he blurts, “Please.”

“What?” the Castellan snaps.

It might be more persuasive if Paul looked at him, but he’d have to look away from Teemu for that, so it isn’t worth it. “Can we please just say goodbye,” he says. “I mean, I won’t remember anyway, but he will, right?”

Teemu doesn’t wait for permission. He shakes himself loose and steps forward, back into Paul’s space. “They’ll take everything from you,” he says, low, though there’s no hope of actual privacy here. “You won’t remember even leaving home. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know.” Paul sways helplessly towards him.

“I’m so sorry,” says Teemu. “About all of this.” He leans in to kiss Paul, lingering, as though no one else is there--and then he’s in Paul’s head, with a flare of pure feeling that nearly makes Paul stagger, pouring out everything they should have had the time to say aloud.

“It’s okay,” Paul says shakily, when they finally have to break apart. “Everything’s going to be fine--” He wishes his hands were free, so he could touch; maybe that way Teemu would actually believe him.

“I’m not _leaving you_ ,” says Teemu, finishing a line of thought too involved to fit in the length of a kiss. “Paul. No.”

“You are. You have to.”

There’s a lot of hallway between here and the trial room. That’s more than enough opportunity for Teemu to get away and get down to the undercroft, where the TARDIS is still sitting alone and defenseless. Squeaky will be waiting there with the TARDIS key for him--but it’s nowhere near enough opportunity for him to get away, make a detour to get Paul, and _then_ make it down to the TARDIS.

Either Teemu makes it out of here, or neither of them do. Paul really hopes Teemu understands that.

“It doesn’t matter any less,” Paul says, near-frantic. “You know, if I forget--all of this, it won’t be any less amazing, everything you did for me--”

“E _nough_ ,” says the Castellan, unimpressed, “let’s get this over with,” and Teemu is hauled away and out of sight, with the Castellan bringing up the rear.

Paul listens to Teemu’s receding protests, heart in his mouth, and then looks at the guards left behind with him. “Okay,” he says. “I’m ready.”

It’s a long, silent walk down to a berthing bay where he’s pushed through the door of a ready TARDIS. The console room is small, nothing but unadorned white plastic and harsh lighting--so blank it’s like it’s expecting something. Paul claims the only chair in the room, watching his three guards surround the console and prepare for departure. He’s suddenly, horribly homesick for the TARDIS he knows--fuck, he promised he’d be right back, she’s down there waiting. She might be waiting a long time.

“The Daleks stole my entire planet,” he says to the room at large. “Did you even know that? They blipped it halfway across the galaxy, landed in the streets, rounded up and killed thousands of people and you didn’t lift a finger. One guy leaves the planet, though, that’s terrible. That could be _dangerous_.”

Nobody answers him, or looks around. Maybe they don’t think he’s worth it.

Paul doesn’t expect anything anyway; he’s just talking. “But hey,” he says. “I’m already brain-damaged. What’s a little more memory loss, in the grand scheme of things?”

*******

The phone call sucks, just about as badly as anything Paul’s done in his life, including major surgical operations. He wishes he’d had more time to brace for it, but he doesn’t really know what actual good that would have done; he wishes he didn’t have to sit alone when he has this conversation, but he can’t imagine who he could ask to keep him company who’d be better than his own sister.

Afterwards he calls his other siblings, and then their mother. The entire evening is hell. He makes dinner and eats it without a single clue what he’s putting in his mouth. It’s nearly sunset by the time the UNIT helicopters finally give up, leaving an oppressive silence behind them.

The press springs into action writing mortifyingly sentimental puff pieces (“They’re not puff pieces if they’re _true_ ,” says Michiko patiently) and panicked exposés about concussion protocols and CTE. Paul doesn’t read any of them but hates them all in equal measure.

More of the usual NHL guys trickle west for the surfing, and express their sympathy with all the discomfort of knowing the same anvil could drop on them at any time. He gets calls from St. Louis and then Anaheim about holding ceremonies in the fall, and declines both. Paul opened too many seasons at Scottrade by taking off his helmet and standing in silence for people massacred by Daleks; he’s not interested in attending his own memorial service to top it off.

The first week is mostly a blur. Nothing has concretely changed in Paul’s routine, and yet he never seems to know what to do with himself at any given time. His memory’s more of a blur than it should be, even under stress; he keeps finding things in places he doesn’t remember leaving them. More disturbingly, he’s been itching with the feeling that there’s someone else in the house with him. And when he sleeps he has long, unsettling dreams: a bell is ringing somewhere, deep down and humming through his bones, but he can never tell whether the ringing is inside or outside his own head.

He thinks maybe what he needs is a change of scenery, so he flies East to visit his sister.

*******

Noriko is understandably suspicious. They’re not a “surprise visit” kind of family, no matter how many vague noises Paul makes about wanting to catch up, but she still lets him sleep on her couch for a few days and trail along to her gym. She’s fresh off a meet, so for the moment her workouts are eased back to a point Paul can actually keep up with.

(Noriko barely comes up to Paul’s shoulder, she’s two-thirds his weight, and Paul has many of his own athletic advantages but zero illusions about which of them would be left standing in a head-on collision.)

“Hey,” he says after a couple of days. “Remember that time you said you’d teach me to throw a punch properly?”

Noriko wipes chalk off her hands onto the front of her shirt. “That was like fifty years ago. And I was making fun of you.”

“I know.” Paul isn’t sure what’s brought this on, besides the obvious opportunity, and maybe the vague notion that if he can no longer take it, he’d feel better if he was able to dish it out. “I’m taking you up on it anyway.”

“I think they scratch your name off the Lady Byng for this kind of shit,” says Noriko doubtfully.

Paul doesn’t especially give a fuck about that right now, and says as much.

*******

“Okay,” she says later, over lunch. “What’s wrong with you?”

Paul gives her the blank stare that question deserves.

Noriko rolls her eyes. “I mean, even for you this is kind of weird.”

Paul shrugs. “Just feeling kind of out of it, I guess. At loose ends. I keep feeling like there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be that I’ve forgotten.”

“So you thought, maybe that’s New Jersey? Because as nice as it is to see you--” Noriko shakes her head skeptically.

“Well, what would you do, then?”

She sighs. “Look, I got the same way after I retired. It’s weird, right? Like a big hole in your chest. No matter how busy you are, you feel guilty, like you’re neglecting something.”

“Yeah,” says Paul, a bit thickly, because that’s exactly how it feels, and also because he makes a point never to ask Noriko about her own retirement. She’s never shared her reasons for giving up something she loved, and he’s afraid it’s because she got tired of being overshadowed by him. “What’d you do about it?”

“Just gotta ride it out,” says Noriko. “Sorry.”

Paul jabs thoughtfully at his own salad with his fork, and then makes a deliberately poor life choice. “There is, uh. Something else. That’s been on my mind.”

“Oh, God,” says Noriko, but she’s still watching him attentively. “What?”

“I’m.” Paul swallows. “Bisexual? I think. I mean, I’m sure, it’s just weird saying it out loud.”

“Oh my God,” she says again. “What happened? Are you _seeing someone_?” As though that’s the most shocking concept on the table here.

“No!” Paul yelps. “Nothing’s happened, you don’t need to--defend my honor, or anything--”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself.” She’s staring, fork hanging forgotten in her hand, but she hasn’t freaked out or left or anything, which is good, Paul thinks. It’s not like he has any precedent to judge by; he’s never tried to have this conversation with anyone before.

“It’s just been on my mind lately,” says Paul, losing his nerve again and looking down at the table. “I guess, without hockey--I could now. If I met someone. Which I haven’t.”

“Have you told anyone else yet? Are you going to, like, fly to Finland to tell Steve and Martin in person?”

“No,” says Paul, alarmed even by the thought of it. “To any of that. I guess you’re my guinea pig, sorry. It’s not like there’s anything you can do about it.”

“Moral support?” says Noriko uncertainly, like she isn’t sure whether the thought is reassuring; it loosens a very, very old knot in Paul’s neck all the same. “Just, you know, I don’t think I can go on a last-minute vacation to Europe right now.”

“This isn’t why I came here,” says Paul. “Not really. I didn’t mean to just--dump shit on you.”

“Then seriously, why are you here?”

“I heard there were aliens invading New York--” Paul hesitates, but the urge is too long ground-in to resist-- “turns out there weren’t, so I came to find the next weirdest-looking thing.”

Noriko kicks him in the shins under the table, so he’s pretty sure that went okay.

*******

Paul stays in New Jersey for almost a week; then he keeps missing _real_ ocean, and goes home. Unfortunately, the disorientation sets back in almost immediately. His first night back, he sleeps worse on his large expensive mattress than he did on Noriko’s sofa.

The next morning a stranger knocks on Paul’s front door, and the first thing he says is “Hello, do you remember me?” Which is always a bad sign.

“Sorry,” Paul says automatically, and then pauses. “Wait, no, that thing with the sea monster. You were the guy with the boat.”

“That’s me,” says the stranger, though his smile looks strained for some reason. “The guy with the boat.”

“Hey, well, come in.” The whole thing seems a little weird, this guy showing up again, but it’s probably rude to not even offer someone a drink after they save your life, so Paul stands aside to let him in. “Sorry again, it’s been. A weird couple of weeks.”

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” the stranger says, and immediately proves himself to be a liar by grabbing Paul’s arm to stop him cold.

“What the hell?” Paul knows his own upper body strength exactly, quantifiably, and no amount of yanking is getting his arm free.

“I’m sorry, Paul,” the stranger says, and he sounds like he means it, which counts for nothing. “This might hurt. Maybe a lot, I don’t really know.”

“You don’t--what?” Paul begins, but then there’s someone else in his head with him--

the someone else is _him_ , squeezed too tight into his own skull with himself--

he’s stretching, unfolding, bursting at the seams--

Paul’s legs nearly give out; he staggers forward and Teemu has to catch him, holding him up with an arm around his waist. “You were right,” he says distantly. “Christ, that hurts.”

Teemu’s still gripping his wrist. “Is it you?” he says, painfully cautious.

“Hey,” says Paul, and slumps against him. “It’s okay, it’s me, you did it.”

“ _Paul,_ ” says Teemu, with a crack in his voice he’d usually never allow; he helps Paul over to the sofa and crouches down in front of him. “Here, look at me, let me see you.”

Paul just groans and sags forward, face in his hands.

Teemu braces his hands on Paul’s knees. “Let me see you,” he says again, and kisses the top of Paul’s head.

Paul finds a smile for that and lifts his head to find Teemu peering anxiously up into his face. “Better?”

“Much.” Teemu lets go of Paul’s knee and curls his fingers against his chest instead, over his heart. For a moment Paul can still feel the shiver of relief and affection besides his own--just a warm trickle into his chest from Teemu’s fingertips, before the connection between them closes altogether.

Paul kisses his hair in return and then just stays where he is, foreheads pressed together. “Let’s never do that again, okay?”

Teemu snorts. “What if you never _make me_ do that again?” He’s not looking too steady himself; he’s probably got a healthy share of Paul’s headache, not that he’s going to admit it.

“It worked, didn’t it?” says Paul, because he feels like it’s his turn for some fake-casual smugness. Then he listens to himself and sits bolt upright. “Teemu. _Teemu._ The net _worked._ They wiped my memory and it didn’t stick.”

Teemu kneels up for a hard celebratory kiss, but he still looks horribly stricken afterwards. “You were gone,” he says hoarsely, grip tightening on Paul’s leg for a moment. “I came back here as soon as I could, and you were gone.”

“I forgot,” says Paul, trying to make it sound light, but he has to close his eyes for a second, nose pressed to Teemu’s cheekbone to steady himself. “I just didn’t remember--that there was someone to wait around here for. I’m sorry.”

Before Paul went back to Gallifrey, he’d gone back to the hospital--when it was still a real hospital, before the Cybermen had gotten hold of it. He’d had no idea what to expect from the procedure--but no, just in and out, and a day of waiting for the net to fully integrate. The possibility of his memories being wiped had seemed like a distant worst case at the time, but apparently the High Council had pulled that crap on humans before. Better to be safe and head it off. Always, always better to be safe.

He doesn’t know how much of that, exactly, he managed to convey in a brief, panicked first-ever effort at telepathy. It was enough to convince Teemu to get himself and the TARDIS out of there, which is really all that matters.

Teemu’s fingers run over the back of his neck and find the tender little patch hidden in Paul’s hairline where the techs pierced his skull. “That was incredible. All of that--what you did. You were incredible. ”

“I needed you back.” Paul kisses the side of Teemu’s neck. It sounds self-evident when he puts it like that, but he can’t get his own head around how, exactly, he managed to get them here. He just knows there was never any other option. They were going to hurt Teemu in a way he can’t even imagine, and--well, now they’re both safe and Paul might be a cyborg; he isn’t entirely clear on that point. What a funny universe they live in. “I just needed to get you back,” he says again, in case it’ll be more informative the second time around.

“Well, here we are.” Teemu’s wide eyes are fixed on him, but his fingers are still wandering--over Paul’s hair, his face, curling against his chest again, taking him in like he’s never seen Paul before in his life.

“I would never,” says Paul incoherently. He’s so tired, and so overwhelmed that this is his, and he doesn’t _want_ to think about how narrowly they teetered on the edge of losing each other, but he’s worn too thin to hold it back. “You know I would never have let them--god, Teemu--”

“Shh.” Teemu gathers him in and holds on, but after a moment he adds, “Neither would I, okay? I would’ve come back and put this right. No matter what.”

“It’s okay,” says Paul, stroking Teemu’s hair with shaking fingers--but that isn’t quite true, is it? “It’ll be okay.”

He wishes--it’s ironic, maybe--he wishes he could forget this had happened. He wishes he didn’t know how easily the High Council ripped out his heart, let him loose into the universe with a hole in him so deep he forgot there’d ever been anything there. Even with his memory restored the thought makes him sick.

“Better lie down,” Teemu says at last, when neither of them is shivering any more, and Paul is drifting off right here sitting up.

It takes them a while longer to actually disentangle, but eventually Paul settles into the couch, sliding down to lie on his back; he almost misses a golden gleam and a rattle as Squeaky pops out from under a bookcase Paul’s pretty sure isn’t his. It hops up onto the arm of the sofa, humming to itself as it scans him. “What,” says Paul. “I’m fine, stop that.” It doesn’t stop.

“It missed you,” says Teemu. “And the TARDIS worried too, when you didn’t come back with me--” which, right, would explain the extra bookcase. “It just wants to tell her you’re okay.”

“Sorry,” says Paul to the robot, and lets it finish its scan and scuttle back into the TARDIS. “Hey, uh, that reminds me.” He reaches over to hold on to Teemu’s arm. “What was the other thing you stole?”

“What?” Teemu blinks at him.

“They said you’d stolen something called a Time Ring.”

“It’s a ring,” says Teemu, a bit snottily, but his eyes shift away when Paul makes a half-hearted face at him. “A portable time travel device. Not too powerful, but it can’t hurt to keep one around, can it?”

“We already _have_ a time machine. Is it some kind of family heirloom or something?”

“No, I just thought it might come in handy. And I figured, when would I have another chance to get hold of one? It’s embarrassing, really. Don’t worry about it.”

“Ha,” says Paul, because he doesn’t think Teemu’s ever been embarrassed a moment in his life--but he’s fidgeting and looking at the carpet all of a sudden, and holy shit, he means it. “Teemu,” says Paul slowly, forgetting his encroaching headache. “What’s the ring for?”

Teemu has switched to staring determinedly at the ceiling, which is both charming and deeply worrying. “It’s--well. If you wore it it would keep you from aging. But it seems humans get very excited about giving each other rings, so--”

“Oh,” says Paul, faintly. “That’s. I.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you, I just thought I should get one while I should. In case there was a chance you might want something like that. Eventually.”

Staring at the ceiling suddenly seems like a really excellent, safe plan. “Would the guards have caught you? If you hadn’t gone for the ring.”

“Like I said. Selfish.”

This is tremendous, and Paul has nothing to say to it; his brain is nothing but static. "You look tired," he says instead. It’s not untrue. "How are you always so short on sleep? You don't need that much, it's not like we're ever strapped for _time--”_

"Paul."

"I know I'm tired.” He’d forgotten for a minute, but he’s remembering now just how exhausted he is. It’s been a shitty day--a shitty couple of weeks--for both of them. He reaches for Teemu’s hand, the clearest signal of good will he can think of for now. “Please just--come lie down for now, okay?”

Teemu joins him on the couch, at least--lies down to cover him and holds on tight, like Paul always thought he couldn't stand until he couldn’t live without it. "I'm sorry," he says, muffled against Paul’s chest, “you weren’t supposed to know,” but Paul is already too close to sleep to do more than press his face into Teemu’s hair.

*******

When Paul wakes up Teemu’s still there, although he’s sitting on the floor again--with his back against the sofa this time, reading a book. It appears to be the _Star Wars_ Visual Encyclopedia, which Paul has been fully intending to get rid of since about 2008.

“Did you know,” says Teemu as soon as Paul moves, “there are whole civilizations that think _Star Wars_ is historical fact? Human media is so infectious, it’s incredible.” He glances up. “Still angry at me?”

“Mmm,” says Paul sleepily, and rolls onto his side to see better. “Furious.” He still is, a low hum of pent-up irritation, but it’s not his first priority. “Head’s hurting less.”

“Want to be alone?”

Paul shakes his head.

“I’ll stay,” Teemu says,, and lets his head drop back against the cushions to stare up at the ceiling. The book is still open in his lap.

There’s still a fading echo of him in Paul’s head--the rush of fierce, blinding joy that’s apparently how he makes Teemu feel, and the cold steel thread of panic: _don’t leave me, don’t let them, please, Paul, I can’t--_

And Paul thinks he remembers answering, scared out of his wits by his own bullshit plan: _you won’t be alone again, never, I swear._

"What would I have done?" Paul asks. "With a ring but without you. What would have been the point?"

“That’s not--” Teemu huffs in frustration. “The ring was to make it easier for you to stay. If you ever want that.”

Teemu could make Paul next to immortal, but only if they choose it together. Teemu could sit in the Panopticon and pass judgment on the universe, he could burn or save galaxies at a whim, but he’s been sitting here with a book so that Paul wouldn’t wake up alone.

“Did you see into me?” Paul wonders. “Like I saw you? Do you know--” that Teemu is the rock that caught Paul, grounded him when Paul felt like he was falling right off the Earth into nothing? That Teemu is a bright and joyous flame in a cold and fucked-up universe, and Paul never means to let anything dim or quench him?

That even if it’s far too soon to say so, Paul is sure: he’s never giving this up, not one second sooner than he has to. Sure enough that he’s willing to be patient and get it right.

Teemu nods. “I saw. But I didn’t need to--you’re not subtle at all, did you know?”

Paul laughs, reaching over to slide his fingers into Teemu’s hair, and watches him smile up at the ceiling. For a minute nothing about this seems complicated at all; certainly nothing here is so terrible that anyone should want to tear it out of him by the roots.

Later on Paul thinks he’s going to be really angry about that, but honestly he has more important feelings to be having right now. “Where’s the ring? I didn’t see one with the other things you took.”

Teemu lifts his head to look warily at him. “I hid it in my coat sleeve. The TARDIS is keeping it safe for now.”

Paul takes a moment longer to think about all of this, just to check that he still has no idea what he’s getting himself into, which he doesn’t, and all of it is still terrifying, which it is. Then he props himself up on one elbow to lean a bit closer. “You should hang on to it.”

“You think so?” Teemu actually gapes, which has to be a once-a-century achievement or better.

Paul takes one deep breath, in and out. “I think so. Just in case we need it for something, right?”

“Of course,” says Teemu, but he still looks stunned. “That’s very--very sensible.” He leans in and kisses Paul, soft but thorough, fingers sliding through Paul’s hair. Then he folds his arms on the edge of the sofa, rests his chin on them, and just looks quietly for a minute.

“What?” says Paul, but he can’t help smiling back.

"You know,” Teemu says, “I could take you to a planet with actual Jedi.”

“You’re full of shit.” Paul covers Teemu’s face with his hand and shoves gently.

Teemu kisses his palm, unfazed. “No, I swear. They evolved telekinesis all on their own, and then _Star Wars_ got there, and--"

Paul does not believe this for a second, but there’s nowhere Teemu could go where he wouldn’t willingly follow. He’s known that for a while now.

"Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 


End file.
